Saturday 13 September 2008-  The final week of summer is passing away with a show of modest flowers, although our drought goes on.  Figs are ripening in the lowering sun, and good work is going on in the yurts.
  The constructions are at last off the wall (some of them, at least) and standing up all by themselves.  I have come now to the country I would be content to explore for as long as I have left in the world.  But one never knows where the road ahead will lead.  To be at this place is blessing enough for today.

  Tuesday 16 September 2008-  When  I began making constructions ten years ago, they were built on the same sort of wood panels I made for paintings.  I viewed them as a bridge between my paintings, and the carved wooden sculpture I was doing at the time.  Over time, the constructions became more like sculpture and less like painting.  Color, while still in play, became subordinate to form and texture, as the works began to push beyond the limitations of the rectangular panels and pull away from the plane of the supporting wall. It was inevitable that they would eventually abandon the wall altogether.

  Monday 22 September 2008-   I thought I had just about finished with the free-standing "Apogee" piece  (right).  Spent much of last week laying on oxides and acrylic, but the closer I came to getting the color right, the more obvious it became that the shape isn't quite.  Tomorrow, I'll begin re-working the offending parts, and then the entire finishing process will have to be done over.  Sometimes art gets a whole lot like real life.

BELOW:
  "Sight 2"
wood, stone, found objects, micaceous oxides, acrylic
14x11x4 in.

ABOVE:
"Apogee 2" (work in progress)
wood, stone, found objects
59x12x11 in.

BELOW:
"Sight 3"
wood, stone, found objects, micaceous oxides,
acrylic
18x11x3 in.

  Friday 26 September 2008-  Marilyn Lavi, who runs a gallery on Long Island, has been encouraging me to get my constructions off the wall.  Well, Marilyn, after numerous false starts and much back tracking, here's one (left) that has a leg to stand on.  I hope you like it.

  Saturday 27 September 2008-  A new project begins with almost nothing, and often with no substantial hope it will ever achieve fruition.  Beginning with a notion of the probable size of a piece, a support is made, a panel if the piece is to be wall-mounted, or some sort of base for a free standing piece.
  A nidus of myrtle branches (right) brought down by an ice storm a couple of winters ago, may be the start of something.  At this point nothing is joined or attached to the base.  Just pile them up and look at them for awhile.  Add some, remove some, rearrange the lot, carve and shape some of the members.  Maybe the whole lot will be chucked back on the scrap pile to emerge in some future  effort.  Maybe this road will actually take us somewhere.  Time will tell.

  Tuesday 30 September 2008-  The work pictured below will be included in the "BKLN 111" show at BAG Gallery, 168 67th Street, Brooklyn NY,  October 17-25. This is a fundraiser for the Brooklyn Artists Gym.  618.858.9069
www.brooklynartistsgym.com

BELOW:
"Apogee 2"
wood, stone, found objects, micaceous oxides,
acrylic
55x11x12 in.

BELOW LEFT:
"Here Below"
wood, terra cotta, found objects, acrylic
11x11x3 in.

BELOW CENTER:
"Dragonseye 2"
wood, stone, found objects, acrylic
11x11x3 in.

BELOW RIGHT:
"Traverse"
wood, stone, found objects, acrylic
11x13x3 in.