Thursday, March 17, 2011

Fish Lips Stone Carving

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Today Italy celebrates 150th year since its unification. Funny, for a place that has seen so much history and change and influence from so many other cultures over the centuries. For your thinking pleasure, here is an interesting link someone posted on Facebook about Italy and its relationship to the rest of Europe. Happy birthday, Italia!

But long before I knew anything about la bella Italia, I knew that I was part Irish, from my Grandpa Mike’s side of the family. So, I would like to share with you today one of my GREEN sculptures!


"Fish Lips"
Green Marble (Canada)
one-of-a-kind
17" h x 6.5" w x 23.5" d
$4000

http://www.borsheimarts.com/sculpture/2006/fishlips.htm
This particular marble from Canada has a blue-green color overall. It is a very hard marble, but as you can see from the way I carved her, she has many, many layers. She is unusual because generally stones that have layers like this have one direction in which the pattern is in straight lines. To get curves, one carves perpendicular to these lines, pushing back into them to make concentric circles. This stone has no such property. She has lovely zig zags from all directions. It simply amazes me.



So once again, when the stone has a complicated personality, I carve a relatively simple shape. I have been making the "fishlips" expression since I was a child. I do not know why it is so much fun, especially for young children. Since the "Lips Series" tends to be a bit different from my representational style, I wanted to use it to do some exploration. I hope you enjoy this stone sculpture.

Fish Lips has been sealed, like all of my other stones, and is a hard marble. It should be fine to display either indoors or out.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!


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