He's No Choir Boy

I went collecting again at Belle Isle and had a revelation of sorts. I found plenty of glass, from Coke bottles, wine bottles, and lots of bits and pieces from Hennessy bottles (a favorite beverage in Detroit.)

I found some wonderful pieces of slag (the by-product of smelting ore to purify metals) from our local steel mills just downriver. The steel mills have been there for around 100 years or more, so this slag could be very old. I thought it would make great hair.

I also found what appeared to be an old outlet plug, from the 1920's, about the same era my own home was built.

I say "appeared", because it was then that I noticed the tiny horns on one end of the outlet plug. I turned the plug around just in time to see a small devil attempting to hide within the plug! His horns and tail were clearly showing as he tried to squeeze himself further into the outlet.

Suddenly, it all made sense! I had seen a serpent that very morning, along the shore. It had slithered away from me when I stole its likeness with my camera.

The fact is that there are actually many tiny Edens, and many tiny moral struggles, all around us, and angels and demons may be found anywhere and everywhere, at any time of the day or night. Therefore, my task was as clear as the glass I had collected (which is actually kind of frosty and nicely weathered...) I must make a mosaic showing the Angel on one shoulder, and the Devil on the other, just as we remember them from our childhood fables.

I pieced together a makeshift angel from tile, glass and beads...

...and positioned him opposite the devil, who is so ashamed of himself he cannot even face us.

I placed both creatures on the shoulders of my Hennessy Man, who wears his addictions even on his necktie.

He can use all the help he can get to resist the temptations that are choking him, because, after all, he's no choir boy.


Acrylic paint, glass, slag, ceramic tile, beads and outlet plug on marble.

Not Baaaad At All!

Extreme Sheepherding Art

3 From the D

My first classical sculpture. Now it needs to dry out slowly, then be fired in the kiln.

The next session will be on just head and hands, life-sized, employing the same model. Should be fun.

“Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.”
- Pablo Picasso

Couple

A couple of years ago, when we had our driveway removed, we discovered slabs of pure white marble underneath the concrete. What it was doing there was anyone's guess; it was almost the kind of thing you'd find in a cemetery. In any case, it is proving to be a useful find, as it provides a nice surface on which to do some mosaics. I have three pieces. This is one of them.

Broken bottle glass, beads, garnets and lapis lazuli, Chinese turquoise and acrylic paint on marble. Roughly 30 x 36 cm.

Make It So

Oh, dear. A very ugly corner of my alley.



This will not do at all.


Drag out the collected tiles and mosaic bits and pieces, mix up the thin set mortar and begin.

Add some patio tiles and pea gravel for a neat and tidy floor.

Yes, that's much better. It resembles a bright and cheerful crazy quilt.


Just what my alley needs.


It sets off the artwork that graces either side of my garage.

When We Were Very Young

She must have squinted hard into the bright morning sun, as the green balloon escaped from her tiny fist and rose quickly into the sky, along with all the other balloons. The air was bright with color, as she shielded her eyes with her other hand and waved to the balloon as it disappeared over the farms and railroad tracks.
..............................................................................................
Some days later, a woman, a kind of crazy artist who was collecting bits of colored glass and other junk from a Belle Isle beach happened to see the tightly bundled plastic sandwich bag among the flotsam.

She almost passed it by, as just another piece of trash, then stopped when she spotted the scribbles on the paper inside the baggie. She noted the bit of burst green rubber still clinging to the long colored ribbon and guessed that it all meant something. Reaching into the pocket of her hoodie, she fished out her camera and snapped a picture of the thing in place.

The woman didn't have a knife and the knot was very tight, so she tossed the bag into her collection of glass and other odds and ends and took it home.

And this is what she found...

The Devil's in the Details

Continuing my sudden, summer love affair with Belle Isle, I have collected an ample supply of broken beach glass from along the Belle Isle river front. Mostly from the Canadian side of the island, where one must interrupt one's collecting expedition pleasantly to wave to passing pleasure boats and freighters. I am using the bits of vari-colored glass to produce crude mosaics, combining the glass and glass beads, semi-precious stones (in this case, tiny garnets from a broken necklace) shells and tiles.

Some of these mosaics I intend to use to make a "call and response" intervention with the secret mosaics I found earlier (See: "Tile Be There", May 11, 2009.) Others I already have installed in my own garden.

Here is a small green devil done mostly in Coke bottle glass, on some sort of micaceous rock...

He is ready to tempt this tender woman, who is innocently enjoying herself in a swing beneath a flowering tree. Bad devil!

Have a nice weekend!

"Cast" Party

Well-known sculptor, Janice Trimpe, had her big studio bash Saturday evening at her new space on Kercheval, close to my home. I have been taking her sculpture classes and have discovered "life in the round”. So I couldn’t miss her opening. My husband and I attended and sampled the sangria.

Hmmm… interesting doorstop…

On closer inspection - hey, isn’t that Cardinal Maida? Why, yes, I believe it is…

Artists are a democratic sort and all kinds of people are drawn to the studios.

Here is Janice with her beautiful 90-year-old mother.

The jazz band was really hot.

I wonder what all those heads are thinking?

Wish you'd been there. Next time, join us.

The River Knows

(Photo courtesy of the Grosse Pointe War Memorial)

Solving a mystery
of the deep
Stolen War Memorial statue found by police divers

By K. Michelle Moran
C & G Staff Writer CandGNews

DETROIT — Detroit Police Department Dive Team divers felt “The Nude” in the Detroit River before they ever saw her.

While on a routine training dive two weeks ago to recover a submerged car off of Alter Road, one of the divers came in contact with the sculpture’s hand and head. With no visibility in the murky waters, they had to postpone the recovery until May 6... (Read Full Story Here )

Tile Be There

On Sunday I took a walk with my dog on Belle Isle. This island park sails the river between two countries - Canada on one side and the US on the other. It is a place layered with history and events, both peaceful and violent.

Ships from all over the world chug past the island. Lake freighters carrying ore to downriver steelmills and the "salties" which venture across oceans and through the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

The dog is especially fond of our walks on the island. There are lots of muskrat holes to explore.

Deeply.

And new life to admire and celebrate.

There are other discoveries to be made. The seawall that protects the island from the swift river currents and knife-edged winter ice is made up mostly of chunks of recycled concrete from roadsides and torn-down buildings. Beautiful architectural details can be found under lapping waves, abandoned.

You can even find ghostly dance steps in some random pieces of concrete. I don't know how this occurs.

I wandered out to this lonely spot.

At my feet, among the blocks of plain, gray concrete, I found pieces which had been deliberately decorated with colorful tiles by artists unknown.

It would be easy to work quietly, and undetected, here. Few people venture out this way and not all reach this place. Fewer still pay much attention to a person seated low and close to the water, assuming, probably, that they are picnicing or just spending time by themselves looking at the water. One mosaic stated simply and enigmatically,"3 degrees".

The more my eyes scanned the shore, the more mosaics I saw. A kind of quiet, guerrilla art in a quiet, natural place, with the sailboats fluttering along nearby and massive freighters as the most frequent witnesses to the color and imagery. And someone willing to wander away from the crowds. With a dog as a companion.

I think I will come there again with supplies tucked into a satchel, claim a block and create a mostly unseen mosaic. Maybe several. Look for me this summer. I'll be the woman sitting low, and close to the water's edge, seemingly absorbed by my own thoughts and the sunlight glinting off the waves.

New Homes Built in Detroit!

February 17, 2009

On The Detroit River: Beavers Are Back After Long Absence

From the Detroit Free Press:

In a stunning sign of ecological recovery, beavers have returned to Detroit for the first time in perhaps a century.

A single beaver lodge has been discovered in an intake canal at Detroit Edison's Conners Creek power plant on Detroit's east riverfront. Edison workers using motion-sensitive cameras caught photographs and video of the beaver in November.

John Hartig, the Detroit River refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said beavers were last spotted in the Detroit River at least 75 years ago, possibly as long ago as a century. Their return signals that a multiyear effort to clean up the river has paid off.

EM NEPO

This is a new garden painting for the front yard. It is two rectangular pieces of wood which face each other.

On one side is an old book with two little brown hands holding it. There is a message on the book spelled backwards, in letterpress.

On the other side is a picture of a little girl with a mirror where her face should be. You can read the message from the book in the mirror.


Views of the back of each piece. The girl has a landscape on her reverse side.

The book is a book on its back cover. The hands hold it there as well.


Acrylic paint, glass beads, automotive glass and mirror on wood.