Hand in Hand
Using a carbide abrasive paper to gently round the edges. 80 grit, low RPM. Euterpe’s complexion is made of limestone, which is creamy and soft. I have to be careful; even sandpaper can be too aggressive and gouge the edges. Such a lovely stone though.
Euterpe
Euterpe wonders about the future of music. What will robot songs be like? She expects them to be precise and rhythmic, less room for atonal shifts or imprecisely layered percussion. Robots won’t find comfort in rain or the sounds of the ocean. Their songs will be rooted in the hum of machinery. Their prenatal sounds are industrial, not heartbeats or the gurgle of their mother’s belly.
Euterpe
Euterpe is the Muse of the Flute, but really she just makes music. All and every music. She plays every instrument, she crafts songs herself with samplers, turntables, instruments, and a mic. Euterpe loves a pastiche of sounds, to mix disparate elements; cultures into her work.
The finished piece will use the creamy limestone at the top of this page. Above is a travertine that I tried first, a silver brown that I might use for another face. I like the grain implied by the travertine, but the limestone is so smooth, it has an elegance that I think suits Euterpe.
Shop Vibes
Mnemosyne is pretty much done. This mess of papers represents the templates used to make her. I keep them archived in case something gets broken. In the bottom right corner, there’s a piece of marble that was her chin. The bottom tip flaked off and it messed with the look of her profile, so I hunted through the stacks until I found the right paper piece and recut the stone.
New Stones
I'm always looking for new materials. It's not just color, though that is the driving force. The veining, the finish, the texture are all things come into the finished piece and the story telling. It's a little bit of an accident that I ended up with four different versions of sage.
Shop Vibes
I have been calling this the lounge, though it looks like a low rent podcast studio to me. It's an attempt to make the workshop a little bit more homey. The prints on the wall are by Elizabeth Porritt Carrington, Rebecca Leveille-Guay, and Soey Milk. There are also some photographs of mine. Always color.
Gold Leaf
Messing around with gold leaf
Mucking around with gold leaf. I’ve never used it before and so I’m bumbling my way through it. I see potential, but have to refine my techniques. I read a paragraph before I started and that intense preparation really showed up in the sloppy results. I’m impatient; I like to go straight in, mess it up, and then learn how to do it properly. I have to put my hands on it to really get it.
Slab Glass
This is the first camera of my memory, about the size of a box of animal crackers. The flash was four-sided, rotated after each shot and then discarded. In the mosaic, I made the flash out of scraps of slab glass inherited from an odd-jobs kind of guy who haunted the neighborhood around my shop. He would frequently have broken tools for sale, cheaply. One day he had a bucket of chips and chunks of thick glass. I’ve had them kicking around for years.
I used this light blue glass for the center of the flash. Oddly enough, held up to the sunlight, the blue glass glows orange. I believe this is an example of how nanoparticles have been used to color glass since the Middle Ages. At least, that’s what I recall from an old episode of NOVA.
Camera
To Mnemosyne the essence is not what we hold, but how we hold it. She is the smell of grandmother’s kitchen, the tint and hue of the photographs taken when we were children. Her domain is not accuracy, just persistence.
Starting the camera
The flash bulb is my favorite part; it’s made of slab glass
Mnemosyne is the hook in the song that catches in your ear. She’s the turn of phrase in a poem that you still recall. She doesn’t care if you like the poem or even understand it. To Mnemosyne the essence is not what we hold, but how we hold it. She is the smell of a grandmother’s kitchen, the tint and hue of the photographs taken when we were children. Her domain is not accuracy, just persistence.
Stone Patchwork
Stone Patchwork
Ming Red/ Rojo Alicante/ Etowah marble/pink travertine/ Morning Glory sandstone/ Rosa Verona/ Lillet granite/ Rosso Francia/ Tennessee Cedar/ Breccia Pernice/ Rhodochrosite/ Lilac/ Tennessee pink marble
Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne dresses in almost-rags, a patchwork of ribbons and fabrics, a quilt of her own history.
Mnemosyne in her patchwork quilted robe
Mnemosyne dresses in almost-rags, a patchwork of ribbons and fabrics, a quilt of her own history. She has nine kids; she doesn’t have the time or money for finery. She prefers this anyway. New clothes lack character. Worn out jeans have stories to tell.
Refining Edges
Sanding edges
I’m hoping to eliminate grout joints in this mosaic, just stone on stone. I may use grout joints in places for story-telling, or to address the background, but within characters, I’d like to avoid the extra lines. That requires addressing the edges, done here with a sanding disk on a five inch grinder.
Patchwork Robe
the geometry of true patchwork/scrap quilt/Siddi/stitchery/ask Mom/seams/draping
Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne, Muse Mama.
Mnemosyne is the Goddess of Memory and the mother of the Muses.
She sometimes jokes that she’s really the goddess of forgetting. Mnemosyne is forgetful herself, often misplacing her keys or phone. She calls all of her kids “Sweetness” because she often forgets their names.