(this is a reprint of an entry from my wordpress.com blog dated February 15th, 2012)

I have had an incredible week .  Dropped off Relax! and Itchy! at Deb Bakel’s so they can get their patinas and picked up the 4 Looks! she had completed.

Aren’t they beautiful? – Here is all 5 together and they love their new patinas – as do I.  It is hard to see from my poorly done photo here, but they have browns and blues and greens with white veining underneath…about 7 layers of color done with heat and mineral and paint.  Their feet are left plain unfinished bronze as are parts of their manes and tails.  These came out so wonderfully.  I am so excited to see how Relax! and Itchy! look in their new patinas…I get to see them tomorrow morning!

Watch! is in wax chasing in Loveland – in the more than capable hands of an independent business owner/artisan named Kathy Page.  She and her husband, Bob, own Page, Inc. in Loveland.  Bob is a metal chaser. (Why are these people running after wax and metal?- you may wonder).  Meeting them last Friday was great fun.

I have made the decision to wait on finishing the last sculpture in the series of seven, called “Wait!”  Since the original is about 3 feet high it will be more expensive to cast.  As I am in the B.S. state of sculpting and reproducing the sculptures (B.S. = Before Sales) I want to keep “Wait!” on the back burner.  Little did I know how appropriate his name would be.

A couple of nights ago I imagined a beautiful girl horse walking around the edge of the big oval jetted tub in our bathroom – perhaps the way she might circle a watering hole before wading in and taking a drink.  She is very dainty and has the sweetest face.

I made a “sketch” wire armature for her yesterday (about 24″ tall) and will have her complete the series of seven instead of “Wait!”  I don’t know what her name will be yet and may ask everyone for help with her naming in an upcoming newsletter in a month or so.

Hope this next week is good to everyone.

Until then!

~A

(this post is a reprint from my wordpress.com blog dated February 8th, 2012)

 

An exciting week – all the Looks! have their new beautiful patinas and I am nearing completion of Leap!  On Friday, Relax! And Itchy! will be in the creative hands of Deb Bakel for their patinas as well so look for new photos of them all on my website by the end of the month.

So each week when I’m not sculpting – while surfing the internet, checking out potential galleries and what shows I would like to try to get juried into – always thinking about the wild horses (of course) which then occasionally leads me to think about politics…it’s interesting that they go together.  And I don’t really like to put my brain into political thinking mode because it usually is frustrating and depressing to me – there are so many things going on that cannot be seen, questions I think of that I cannot find straight answers for.  I didn’t think that in the beginning of my journey to sculpt our horses that I would be thinking about politics…but here I am, thinking about politics.  A lot.

I came across an interesting report published in 2006 by Taylor Jones and Mark Salvo titled “Mortgaging our Natural Heritage” – it begins:

     “What would you do if you owned 180 million acres of land in the American West? Would you lease almost 80 percent of it to livestock grazers (many of them corporations) for 10 percent of its market value, only to watch livestock shear off the native vegetation, erode the soil, degrade water quality, reduce water quantity, destroy riparian areas and harm endangered species, native plants, and wildlife? When grazing fees to use your land did not cover the cost of monitoring and protecting the natural resources, would you then pay millions of dollars of your own money every year to cover the shortfall?  And would you then stand by and watch as those abusing your land received additional millions of dollars in loans using the grazing privileges you granted as collateral for their debt?

     Bad news. You already are.

     On public lands owned by the American people and managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), federally subsidized livestock grazing is rapidly destroying the vitality of our native ecosystems. There are many good arguments against continuing federal public lands ranching, including myriad economic and fiscal arguments. This report details another one.

     What has only recently come to light is how individual grazing permittees, with the aid of lending institutions and the tacit complicity of theBLM, collateralize their federal grazing permits to finance their public lands grazing operations. Both the Forest Service and theBLMsanction the use of publicly owned federal grazing permits and leases as collateral for private bank loans.”

Collateral for private bank loans?…..interesting.

Speaking of politics L I came across this diagram:

It’s a bit outdated – not reflecting where our current president would be, or those running for the GOP nomination…but it isn’t too hard to figure out where to put them.

Speaking of Economic Elitists,   I came across this as well:

“Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.”

This is the last paragraph of an article written by George Lakey called “How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘One Percent’”.

It’s thought provoking to be sure and this particular article is in a lot of places all over the internet – it seems that the Occupy Wall Street movement latched on to it.  Regardless of how you feel about OWS, though…read this article.

I believe history can teach us very relevant-to-today lessons.  This could be one.

Okay.

Seriousness aside now:

ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

Okay.

Back to the horses.

Have a great week!

~A