Today dawned clear and cool. The air was noticeably drier than it has been lately. We had a bit of wind and by this afternoon the grass was actually looking dried out. That was a big change in a short time. Tonight's low temp is forecast to be 57 degrees. It is August. What's up with that? Not that it's a problem - I am getting some work done. Is autumn arriving early this year?
This morning's sunrise:
A bowl I made this week:
That is a walnut bowl surmounting a red mulberry head with a quilted red maple base and an octagonal silver maple transition piece. This piece is the result of trying to tap into something other than conventional bowl design.
Two very different pieces of music.
20 comments:
It happened to me yesterday.
Lovely clouds, original looking with those small circular ones.
Lovely piece. Beddy-bye for me, lol.
The stand that the bowl is on is just as impressive.
Thanks, AllenS - I have gotten a variety of responses to it but that is the first "impressive" I appreciate that.
I ran out of time to mow yesterday. Hoping the rain holds off today so I can get it done, then scoot over to your end of the state on Saturday. Wedding in Cary (which I won't attend, but my wife and in-laws will) and a day with my son in Raleigh. It's been in the 50s in the morning the past few days, so I'm hoping the Piedmont has cooled a bit before I get there.
Aretha and Duane's version was definitely different than every other version I think I've ever heard. Seems like the universal goal is to replicate what The Band already did. I'm not a Michael Jackson fan at all, and typically don't care for covers of his stuff, but those guys are talented. And smooth. Nice unhurried groove.
Stop by as you drive by - you will be going right by my house. Need a wedding present? Wooden bowls make excellent wedding gifts. ;^)
Manure spreaders are sometimes called the Honeywagon. Doesn't matter, they did a nice job on Billie Jean.
My neighbor has a rogue strain of grass that finally spread into my yard and it must be half water. When it rains it takes it forever to dry down so you can cut it.
I like your walnut bowl. We had a couple black walnut trees in our yard when I was growing up. I remember smashing the walnuts (and my fingers) on the sidewalk with a hammer to get at the meat.
Red mulberry, huh?
Very impressive.
Could make a lovely holy water vessel.
I had a thought about baptismal font. What are the dimensions of the bowl? It looks huge.
You guys made me think of wedding anniversary gifts. I wonder who in the world came up with that idea.
"1ST YEAR: Paper
2ND YEAR: Cotton
3RD YEAR: Leather
4TH YEAR: Fruit & Flowers, or Linen & Silk
5TH YEAR: Wood
6TH YEAR: Iron / Candy
7TH YEAR: Wool/ Copper
9TH YEAR: Pottery
10TH YEAR: Tin/ Aluminum"
The transition piece reminds me of the bases Brancusi sometimes gave his sculptures.
I wonder who in the world came up with that idea.
Will I walk into the black hole painted on the comment floor? Fall for the bait? Get stuck in the honeypot carelessly left or carefully paced outside the door by Pooh?
Is it possible for me to cheerfully enter into the ruse and learn to enjoy the game and let go of the frustration that rises each time it's played?
That's my hope, but I'm not there yet. From the wiki:
The historic origins of wedding anniversaries date back to the Holy Roman Empire, when husbands crowned their wives with a silver wreath on their twenty-fifth anniversary, and a gold wreath on the fiftieth. Later, principally in the twentieth century, commercialism led to the addition of more anniversaries being represented by a named gift.
The modern tradition may have originated in medieval Germany where, if a married couple lived to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their wedding, the wife was presented by her friends and neighbors with a silver wreath to congratulate them for the good fortune that had prolonged the lives of the couple for so many years. On celebration of the 50th, the wife received a wreath of gold. Over time the number of symbols expanded and the German tradition came to assign gifts that had direct connections with each stage of married life. The symbols have changed over time. For example, in the United Kingdom, diamond was a well known symbol for the 75th anniversary, but this changed to the now more common 60th anniversary after Queen Victoria's 60 years on the throne was widely marked as her Diamond Jubilee...In 1937, the American National Retail Jeweler Association (now known as Jewelers of America as a result of an organizational merger) introduced an expanded list of gifts. The revamped list gave a gift for each year up to the 25th, and then for every fifth anniversary after that.
By the time two impressives are pronounced, followed by visions of sacramental applications and a transition thought involving a well known sculptor, something potent in the Department of Craftsmanship appears to be stirring, inviting and welcoming the presence of Creativity, Artistry and Imagination.
"Why?" "I HAD TO, You Simp!"
The transition piece could have been a simple column, plain or perhaps fluted;
"Who needs that boredom?" said Sixty, "I'll go for something convoluted!"
Thanks for the poem, ricpic, and thanks for mentioning Brancusi too, he was a favorite of mine. On my old studio I had cut the front porch posts in the shape of his endless column. Not an easy thing to do with long 6x6s, but I did it because I liked his work that much.
Funny thing is - for this piece I just stacked up pieces parts until I got something I liked. Brancusi had slipped into my subconscious, along with the work of Easter Islanders, a dash of Deco was thrown in and his topknot was a walnut bowl.
One distant relative wanted to know when I was going to stain the rest of the piece to match what he assumed was a walnut stain on the bowl. I have now disowned that branch of the family. Even though I am color blind, or maybe because I am, I never stain my work. What the tree produces I keep. Since most of my things are made out of one piece of wood it is rarely a problem. Ask me about the fellow whose wife wanted to know what stain to use on a beautiful elm bowl with a striking contrast between the heartwood and the sapwood.
I used to make baptismal fonts - made one out of white oak for a new church nearby. Made a couple more as test pieces. The shape I used was a semi-ellipsoid. I liked it, but they never ordered a second one.
That piece is 13" tall and the bowl is 12" in diameter. My sister-in-law's father was always working towards "monumentality" in his work. Maybe that was a bit of an influence, too. He was a character and he never wanted to dwell on sources for his ideas. I think I am starting to understand that reluctance - let it flow, push it out de do'.
The piece is deceptively small...that bowl looks huge. Lovely proportions.
I may have told this story. Once the choir director's husband, who was quite the woodworker, gave each lady in the choir a wooden kitchen implement. I think everyone else's was regular brown or medium brown spoon. Mine was a spatula, no holes, made of what for a very long time I thought he had stained walnut color. I thought, this doesn't seem safe to cook with because it's stained. I eventually found out that's walnut's natural color.
54 degrees this morning in Clay County, NC. Austin, TX is too hot this time of year.
Impressive is a good word for that piece, SG. Take this the right way please... but I can see sacrificed Mayan hearts being deposited in that bowl. That sacred bowl.
Woman saw that piece today - in fact, I pointed it out to her, she thought the bowl was separate from the base, when she realize it wasn't she said "It's too baroque for me". I said "Well, I can't bar-eak up the set". She chuckled and walked away. So it goes.
What I didn't tell her was that the head motif was partially inspired by some "primitive" heads her late husband used to make as sand sculptures. No reason to drag him into the story.
Clay County? That's next door to me.
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