Three Stone Circles Sketches

Waiting impatiently for the water to clear, the rain to stop, the lake to calm down and the temps to get warmer...or any combination of these factors to occur in order to get into the lake and find some stone. Good days have been few and far between, but this weekend I did manage to get some work done on the Stonewave. I'll shoot some photos tonight of the progress. In the mean time I have been playing around with circles.

The bottom circle was the first from a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't last long as somebody took the sticks and burned them. Must have produced quite the conflagration as the sticks were about 8 inches long and there were about forty of them. But if it kept those poor idiots warm for 2.3 seconds on that blustery 70 degree night then I am thankful that my little sculpture could be of service. The middle image was the next phase. I used the colored stones from the previous piece and added some to make the ring bigger, went out and found some new sticks and tried again. This one lasted about a day before the sticks were burned again. This time in situ! To add insult to injury two hand rails were pried off of the staircase to the beach and burned along with my little wheel of sticks and a liquor bottle was broken in the fire as well...glass bottles apparantly were a last resort for these poor unfortunates as they braved the elements.

The sculpture in the top image has lasted about 10 days so far without major harm from nature or human interference and I've added a stone "flower" this week...the surf has been kind. I have a few more circle ideas still rattling around in my head so you'll just have to be patient. Much painting is being done as well on the 100Views project so I'm enjoying my momentum.

Just finished Picasso's biography (vol. 3). If nothing else, it makes me want to work harder. I found a number of his beach images to be not so interesting and the sculptures from this period in his life don't do much for me, but you have to be impressed by the facility with which he draws from the ideas of others and takes off. By the way the biography is about as in depth as you could want one to be, perhaps too much so, going into such detail as to where he got his socks laundered on July 5th.