Sunday, July 29, 2007
Koru Sculpture
Here's a pic of the almost finished koru sculpture I did during our first class. I still need to smooth it out some more so there are no flat edges. I originally had a rectangular block of oamaru stone, so it's been great to see the rounded shape come out of it. I sawed off the blocks where I needed to get rid of a good bit of stone, then used a big metal rasp to file down the corners and shape it before chiseling out the curve at the top.The koru is a Maori symbol that means growth and change. It's used in all sorts of forms and is based on the curve of the native koru fern.
Anyway, it's a common NZ motif and a fairly simple form to start us out.
Here are some other examples of koru:
Posted by Jessica at 11:11 AM
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Friday, July 27, 2007
sunset and sculpture class
Sunset last night.
Had my first stone sculpture class the other day... great fun! There were about a dozen of us. We got most of the way through our first small scupltures during the 2 and a half hour class. Oamaru is a soft stone, but my arm was still worn out. We had a particular design we had to do for this one so that the teacher could see how we were doing. It's an abstract rendition of a curled fern leaf. I see it a lot here. My homework is to finish it off and get it all smooth before the next class. I'll get a picture of it up in a day or two.
I came out covered in sandy colored dust, and my hair felt like dreadlocks, but I'm looking forward to the next class. Nervousness about not having had an art class since middle school evaporated pretty quickly, once I got stuck in (as they say here) and started sawing and filing.
Posted by Jessica at 4:38 PM
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Monday, July 09, 2007
My friend is giving birth to a rock star... & I saw Billy Connelly's private bits... what a day
Yesterday I discovered that my good friend over at Little Funky Monkey is going to give birth to the next George Harrison! The signs are unmistakable...
Then last night, while watching a recording off of TVOne, I saw Billy Connelly running around in the altogether in the Arctic. It originally aired at 8:30 PM. Mind you, it doesn't bother me at all - I just can't imagine they'd put it on network TV in the states. It was on a par with A Room With a View when Lucy Honeychurch comes across the young men skinny dipping. Anyway it's not every famous person who will run around naked on the frozen tundra.
I'm signing up to take an oamaru stone sculpture class. Oamaru is a native soft stone similar to limestone. Widely carved over here. (Some examples.)
Rain rain and more rain lately, but since it's the middle of winter I'm not out much and don't mind. Took advantage of a few days of sun to do laundry. (We chose not to shell out for a dryer since everyone uses clothes lines here. Honestly I don't think I'll ever buy a dryer again.)
Grabbed books at the library, and I read The Stolen Child since I'd heard it would be a good follow up to Time Traveler's Wife. Stolen Child was alright, but man was it unrelentingly melancholy. I've now moved on to Blindness, which was suggested by jgaston who stopped by and commented on the blog. So far it's quite good, once I got in the groove of reading dialogue without periods or quotes. It was like getting used to All the Pretty Horses years ago...
Labels: books
Posted by Jessica at 5:01 PM
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