Driven

I’m quite overburdened on the sculpture side right now. I always have a backlog of projects that are a quarter done. I always hope to get back to them, but most of them languish on the shelf until they get dusty and cracked. Super Sculpy (My preferred medium) only stays workable for a couple of months. I’m happy that I was able to complete a project for my dad recently. He wrote and preformed in a play that was recorded to CD and I made a sculpture to photograph for the cover. Now I’m feverishly working on one for Christmas presents. I hope to make a mold from it and cast multiple copies so I can spread the joy. But I have never had a mold work for me before. Either it doesn’t set, or breaks, or stick to the sculpture, or breaks the sculpture, etc. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on this one. Besides that one, I’ve got several in the planning stages. For some reason they are all based on songs. Then I have the pieces I started in that sculpture class back in October. Beyond that, I’m still wanting to finish the half-scale busts of my children I’ve had in development for over a year and a half. Every time I start on that project again I get frustrated and quit, because I’m not good enough to do portraits yet. Especially of people I see every day. But then I did a relatively quick caricature of my nanny, and I think it turned out pretty well, so that gives me some hope that I will be able to do it eventually. It’s important to me that I do get good enough because I really want to start a ministry to kids with cancer where I sculpt little portraits of them while talking about how special and beautiful God made them. Then, if they pass on, their parents could have that little memento. But none of that will work if the portrait doesn’t look like them.

But in the mean time I’m trying to figure out how to be a mature artist and reject some of my ideas. I need to be more disciplined, but I become so enamored with these ideas. It’s kind of like first love, I assume. Some people jump from one relationship to the next, because they are addicted to that feeling of the new. I do the same thing with my projects, leaving most of them unfinished. I guess that is another indication that there is a weakness I need to overcome. It’s really just self-indulgence I suppose. So I’m making a promise to myself right now, that I won’t start any more sculptures until the ones I have in the queue are finished. Here is a list for me to check off as I go…

1. Lionheart Cross
2. Funeral of God Series (Based on the record by Zao)
3. A Poet’s Tears of Porcelain (Based on the song by Virgin Black)
4. Beloved (Based on the song by Virgin Black)
5. Lilk (Character maquette for a story)
6. Justin & Shane (Portraits of my kids)

Wow, this is gonna take a while.