The Gathering

So, normally over Easter I make a little pilgrimmage out west to do a little hiking and communing with the nature gods, but this year a variety of factors kept that from happening so instead I spent an inordinate amount of time on the beach communing with the aforesaid gods and quite a bit of time in the studio painting. The end result of all of the painting time is below, the central panel for a little polyptich that I hope to have done by the end of the month. It is the third piece in a series of paintings that are influenced by the actual beach sculptures. I'm OK with the way that it turned out. Now as far as the beach time went, most of it was spent gathering the scattered stone from the destruction of last years sculptures and wall. Much of the stone is just gone...buried beneath the current level of beach sand or washed back out into the lake, but I pretty much got all of the really good stone that remained on the beach and put it back into a storage wall for the time being. This took a crap-load of time and quite a few miles of walking back and forth loaded with stone. The end result is this is what I have stacked up for future use when the building season starts in a couple of weeks. Its probably about 4 feet high and 35 feet long and about 4 feet thick. The sculpture in front has lasted about a month without any serious damage from weather or barbarian hordes.

On Saturday last, conditions were such that I actually went into the water to pull out some of the stones that were lying knee deep or less. Altogether I pulled out 60 good stones which are lying in this little serpentine wall temporarily. The water is still cold enough that the ducks are wearing sweaters. I suffered through it though, for the sake of art. It was very purifying.

With this clarified soul, I did a few small sculptures in the stone of the day. One square gave birth to a second square and just like that the sun set and that was that.