Foundation

This gentleman is about 21" tall and sold at Art On The Boulevard more than a year ago.   He was years in the making... three years, roughly.   I had finished sculpting him and fired him in the kiln in 2006, but finished painting him, I think, in 2009.   When I began sculpting "Foundation", I needed a resource for well-developed male shoulder and back muscles, so I went to a drug store and raided the muscle-man, body-builder magazine section, leaving the store hoping no one I knew would see me (it's a small town and I was a widow lady... I'd never live it down!).   I tore bits and pieces of the photos of rippling, glistening shoulders and biceps and arranged them on my counter top in the corner of the studio, referencing them often while working the clay.  One day my sort-of-boyfriend Jim came by to see what I was doing, and noticed the magazine clips.   "Is this your beefcake corner?" he asked....  every inch of me blushed beet-red.   We still laugh about that.

"Foundation" isn't the first sculpture I've done that explores a stone/human metamorphosis.    There was a piece, tall and narrow, titled "Clifftop Innocent", that sold in 2002, and of course, my first blog photo, "Bones of the Earth".