In Black and White--Sketchbook Pages

 

Pages from my two sketchbooks---one large, the other a tiny pocket sized bound book.

Layers of Time

A few contemporary marks made on the face of historic French buildings ironically seem to bring us full circle to the ancient Mediterranean worlds of Crete and Rome-- The first on the cathedral annex in Nantes looking mighty like a Minoan bee goddess or the same culture's bell skirted lady of serpents. Others appear farther south in Arles, where the cruel art of bullfighting goes on in a Roman era arena, continuing a history of blood sports and finding its way into graffiti throughout the city--- the images look amazingly similar to Minoan frescoes of ritual bull vaulters. And lastly the ciggy smoking Cheshire cat, though he seems to own no overt connection, lives here as the ultimate vanishing time traveller who sees all...and seems to understand.

The Seven Wonders in Fairyland

During the year 2007, when attention was focused on deciding a new version of the seven wonders of the world, I took part through the Applied Imagination atelier in planning and creating a themed installation for the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio. It consisted of miniature versions of some of the candidates being considered, such as the Taj Mahal, a dollhouse scale interpretation (built on an approximately three x three foot base) I created with natural materials like twigs, gourds, dried leaves, pods and bark. After the buildings were finished, it was quite an interesting exhibition to install amid a winding, multilevel display of specimen plants, water features and steep rock formations spiraling upward to high glass ceilings. I spent many hours balanced barefoot on a narrow ledge some fifteen feet above the floor, installing the fairy scale Great Wall of China, secured with a hot glued surround of cork bark and moss to create the illusion that it had been built on this site several ages ago.

 

Great Wall of China (with Becca Stadtlander)

Great Wall (detail)

Taj Mahal

 

Petra, Jordan (studio view in progress)

  Great Sphinx of Giza (in progress)

Sphinx on Site

Machu Picchu (with Becca Stadtlander)

Great Stupa of Boudhanath, Nepal (detail)

Great Stupa (studio view)

To be continued....