The Gift of Ice, Equinoctial Squares and a Show Opening

On a day that ends like this it wouldn't make a difference if what preceded it was less than mundane. What an amazing sunset! Of course, another way to look at it would be that any human effort to create beautiful things under a sky like this would be humiliatingly trivial.

I'm not averse to humiliating myself and it was a perfect evening to work, so I'll take my lumps.

The night time temperatures must have dropped well below freezing the previous night and as the lake was calm, a thin layer of ice formed along the shore. As I was walking down the bluff in the early afternoon I could hear this loud hissing sound as if a gas was escaping under high pressure. When I got to the beach, I found the origin of the sound to be thousands of paper thin sheets of ice that had washed up on shore and each gentle wave pushing into them resulted in their shuffling against each other. The resulting sound was this unearthly hissing. A song of sirens plagued with lisps.

I went to the edge of the water and began to pick up pieces of this delicate ice. If I was careful I could hold pieces as big as 18 inches square and not have them break. I played around with a couple of different ideas and unfortunately for me, the possibilities were so tantalizing that I ended up panicking and failed to meet the challenge. Maybe someday I'll get a second chance.

I did, however, muster the courage to make a small square of overlapping sheets of ice.

Then I added a small square of driftwood sticks and thought, "That looks interesting enough to continue", so before the ice melted I added a third square of stones. The way that the sun was reflecting off of the ice sitting on the dark sand made for an interesting little sketch and I started to feel a little less inadequate.

But just a little...

This took place the weekend of the 15th. The following weekend was the equinox. Weekend weather was hospitable and there always seems to be extra mojo in the air on equinoxes, so I returned to the beach to see what the lake had to offer this time.

Sticks. That's what the lake had to offer. The ice dunes had almost completely melted away and left behind thousands of sticks. Like fossil bones of decayed ice leviathans, they lined the beach. So building on the little stick square ideas from the previous weeks I decided to make a larger square.

It was about four feet on a side and I figured that if it survived the week unscathed I had some ideas for some additions. If it weren't for obligations I could have stayed down there all day. But it was a pleasure while it lasted.

The light was good for shooting photos so I was happy with the day's output and I got a record of it. I also put in a couple hours on the new Stonewave project.

Hey, if you are in Erie, I've got a show opening on Friday, April 3rd at the Urarro Gallery. Sixty paintings, 15 photos of Beachworks projects and Brian Pardini will have some great wood sculptures and Kathy Merski some black and white photos...very nice. Free cheese, so come on by.

Global warming can't come soon enough.

Winter's back is broken and not a moment too soon. Sure there will be more snow and some bitter cold, but the red-winged blackbirds are back in force. They perch in the upper branches and trill out their claims to territory and that means that there is no going back.

Went down to the beachworks to spend some time. A pretty stiff wind was blowing off the lake ice, keeping things chilly. About a mile off shore you could see some pretty impressive breakers hammering at the ice sheet. By next week I'll bet the shore shakes off its lace collar. I spent about 2 hours with the new project and these are some of the photos. I apologize for the lackluster imagery, but the sun was buried under a slate grey blanket of clouds, so brown was the color of the day.

I levelled off the stack of stones on the right side of the bench and then raised the left stack by about 5 courses of stone. I'm still not entirely sure where this is going. I'm open to ideas from the stone, but at this point I'm getting too many options, so nothing is particularly convincing as of yet. I'll just play along until it becomes obvious.

These two pictures of the left stack turned out kind of nice. I didn't take into consideration the background when I was shooting the picture, but when I saw it I was struck by the beauty of the tree in the background in relation to the stones. Serendipity.

I had some additional time to work on a small piece right in front of the bench. I did a little window and took some of the sticks that have been uncovered as the ice dunes melt and played with a little diagonal pattern.

If it survives the week I have some derivations to work off of this window. The problem is remembering. I didn't have my sketchbook with me at the time so I didn't jot down the ideas, so I'm at the mercy of my sieve of a memory. The beach snow is slowly disappearing and I am looking forward to seeing what treasures lie beneath.