This week officially marks the halfway point of my residency – which is just crazy!
I worked with my students on their last wet clay project, we are making a group project of a tree with leaves made by all the students. They collected leaves from their local plants and we pressed them into the clay and cut them out. We’re working on ideas of how they will be assembled into a sculpture for their school.
I also made some progress on my own sculptures, going larger that ever before with a fairly high success rate. I’ve learned a lot about building these fragile pieces and even more about my own impatience to finish them. Sometimes, I really should be letting them set up more or just work more slowly but I push through to finish and that’s generally when it all starts to fall apart. It’s a hard lesson, but I’m starting to get it.
I also took off on a local hike last weekend and found this large temple built into the mountainside. Funny part was when I was hiking over to it, I heard singing echoing over the canyon and I thought it was possibly part of a ceremony. But as I actually approached the temple I realized it was a couple of guys in the parking garage doing karaoke. Religious experience? Maybe?? Despite the karaoke, it was a beautiful view of the valley that I’ve been living in for the past six weeks.