Today is the first day of writing my long awaited, and even longer contemplated personal, "artful" blog.
Strangely enough, I have been thinking of starting a blog for months, like most people, it takes a lot of mental preparation and planning. I could have easily talked myself out of this but I love to write and have a burning desire to talk about what is important to me, and I truly believe that blogging is a wonderful way to share our lives and what is important to us, with others. Hopefully, others will find it interesting too. It will be many posts before I feel comfortable with the mechanical process of posting and creating artful conversations that I intend will give others inspiration to challenge themselves, and know there are no limits when it comes to what we can accomplish when we put our minds to it.
Today, I want to share the experience of installing my sculptured mosaic Lion "The Lion of Flanders" at the Quail Botanical Gardens http:www.qbgardens.org/ in Encinitas, California, yesterday.
I created this lion in 2003 for an outdoor public art exhibition. The sculpture was later gifted back to me by my generous sponsor, The Flanders Group in Pittsford, New York http:www.flandersgroup.com/. As an artist, this honor was not only totally unexpected, I was clueless as to what I was now going to do with a 500 lb. 8' long mosaic lion! I had long suspected it would be auctioned off for charity and that would be the end of it, but no, five years later I am still trekking it around the country on various excursions and exhibitions. My ultimate hope is that someone will fall in love with him as much as I do, and want to marry him....oops, I mean buy him and take him home, so I can create something bigger and better ! Ha! Well, the truth is I have to release him, my friend tells me, who is a psychic and past life regression therapist for 25 years and knows about these kinds of things.
So, I unleashed him and first put him in the Spanish Village Art Center for about a year or so, then he traveled to Mesa, Arizona, http://www.downtownmesa.com/sculpture_exhibit.htm, for their "Sculpture in the Streets" exhibition which lasted six months. Sadly, he was not treated well there, as a few people felt he would look better with his whiskers trimmed off and decided to do that for me. Unfortunately I felt he was better with the whiskers, so I spent about three weeks restoring them along with all of the accompanying mosaic around them. Now he sports his fancy new whiskers (photo above) and is living in a new home for a few months. This one is by far the best. He is actually living in the South African Gardens of Quail Botanical Garden http:www.qbgardens.org/. He will be accompanied by a Giraffe I am told, and I hope they behave themselves!
Here are a few scenes from the re-location:
Posts
3 comments:
Welcome to the blog world- your first post is fascinating. I love the story of your lion, and I hope you will find him a loving home soon. It is hard to let go of our art. The more of yourself you have invested, the more precious it is to you.
I read this particular post 3 times. I absolutely love your work. At those times when I curse the Internet & technology, I just need to remind myself of it's greatest purpose: meeting wonderful people and artists like you. Thank you for your work.
Having positive comments from readers like you gives me encouragement to
keep the conversation going. Thank you for letting me know. One of the reasons for this in the first place. Besides, it defies technology and the internet to be used for a greater good and brings like minded souls together.
Post a Comment