Two or so months ago, I decided to try sculpting. I bought a block of clay and some sculpting tools and dug in… literally. I had no idea what I was doing and began by trying to carve things with those tools. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I actually had to pick up the clay and mold it with my hands rather than carving it with metal toothpick-like things. And it worked. I started forming the clay into a figure and just let my mind – and more importantly my hands – go from there. What happened was kind of amazing for me. I started forming a figure that seemed to speak directly to things I was feeling – both good and bad – emotionally. And it happened with the second figure too. And so, I realized, that I had found a new therapeutic tool.
Sculptures 1 & 2:
About a week ago, my therapist (hereafter referred to as “T”) began talking with me about the importance of holding onto the image of light inside of me when we discussing things that made me feel uncomfortable physically. This really resonated with me because of work I’d done in the past with imagery related to light. It kind of jogged my memory in a way and I decided two weekends ago that I needed to do art related to this light to help me remember it moving forward. That weekend was really interesting because, when I awoke early on Saturday morning, my living room was full of amazing amber-tinted light. I went outside with my camera and fell in love with where I live all over again. I sat outside for about an hour and breathed in the light and the fresh air of the morning – the perfect way to begin my light-filled weekend. This is one of the pictures I captured at about 6:15 that morning:
That morning I also finished a painting I’d started the night before for my bedroom. I’m in the midst of decorating it. It’s all very natural, ivory tones except for some orange/yellow accents here and there. I had a huge wall with nothing on it, so I wanted to do a painting and decided that the “light” theme would be a good one to go with. Here’s what I came up with – different than what I usually do but I’m happy with how it turned out.
Now, back to the sculpting topic: The weekend that I did the two pieces above, I also started my third sculpture. I wasn’t sure how I could capture the idea of light through that medium but I decided to try. I’ve always been drawn to images related to the moon and, to a lesser extent, the sun. And I’m very interested in energy. With my past therapist(s), my fabulous energy worker in DC, and on some level T, I’ve talked about the importance of letting energy and life back into the area around my abdomen. It’s supposedly a very important healing center of the body that I had purposefully ignored for about 25 years (oops). So, I decided to focus my sculpting on a piece related to that. She took me longer than the first two pieces and is a little larger than they are – she is probably six or seven inches tall including the “moon” she’s holding. I ventured out and decided to try imbedding beads into this piece also, and, much to my surprise and delight, it seems to have worked! Finished last night… Here she is:
And a detail shot that shows the beading better:
Joslyn's Art 'n Stuff Blog 