This is the work of Claire Burbridge, whose work I saw at a gallery in Bath, England. Really stunning. Three-dimensional sculptures created in resin through a lost-wax process. Her work carries all the qualities I love in a work of art -- luminescent, three-dimensional, organic, with strong elements of abstracted realism. As they say in England, "brilliant!"

(I will be away from the computer for the month of August. Be back in September!)

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again... So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art to conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know."

-- Rene Daumal

A swelteringly hot day today, which means the studio is like a sauna. Went in early to catch what I could of the cooler morning air. Was wanting to do a larger full-face (half life size) sculpt in the water clay, but with the heat and the need for the fan it would have meant too much hassle trying to keep that much clay moist and workable, so I did another quickie smaller face. I like incorporating realism in these works in the form of roughly proper planes and subtle details, but don't want so much perfect realism that it covers up those fingerprints of the unconscious. Still, I feel I'm lacking a good working knowledge of the structure of the eyes. Struggled with that most again in this face, just like all the others. Something I'll continue to work on --

Put some finish wax on the blue patina'd mouth this morning and while I was buffing it out it rubbed off some of the blue, revealing the warm copper tones underneath. *Nice* --

Played around with that little waxed clay face again, this time setting it on a recent texture piece. Some potential here, I think. Kinda speaks to me --

Didn't work in the studio today, but met a friend there so I was able to pull this piece from the fuming container. Twenty four hours in the fumes left this nice blue patina. Here's a photo next to the enameled piece from yesterday --

Almost didn't get a blog entry today, even though I spent several hours at the studio. I worked very hard for several hours doing *crap*. No, seriously. I don't even want to go into what I spent my time doing. Couldn't bring myself to take any pictures of it, either. But toward the end of the session I switched gears and did a couple more of those molded copper mouth pieces, hoping to replicate the one I ruined yesterday. I've got one in the fuming container right now and the other I played around with the enamels on it. Sifted it on thick and blasted it with the torch. It turned out just "not bad" enough to warrant a photo. Definitely something that deserves more exploration --

messy messy studio! bad-bad-bad! Not a lot of time to hang out today, so I cleaned the place up. But I just couldn't resist futzing with that copper lip piece from yesterday. The one with the patina from heating (the reds) and fuming (the greens). When I fumed it the reds were diminished somewhat and I was hoping I could get them to pop again if I heated the piece one more time. BUT, no dice. As the copper heated up, all those wonderful green specks disappeared! So it's back into the fuming container, hoping to get some green to return. Lesson learned :)