Gallery Visit Indianapolis

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Well, today’s post is another invitation. But first… a little tooting the horn of my artwork:
My pastel drawing on black paper titled "World Traveler" was a finalist in the prestigious Art Renewal Center 2010-2011 ARC Salon - Still Life Category. The ARC works to promote excellence in representational art.

“World Traveler” is one of the images that you may see at my next event. I hope you will help me start of the Labor Day weekend right by checking out “First Friday Gallery Walk” in Indianapolis. Gallery owner Don Elliott and I (at least) will be on hand Friday to personally show you the latest from my studio. I would love to see you there.

2 September 2011
6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
during the Gallery Walk

“Italian Living” Gallery Walk features pastel + charcoal artworks by Kelly Borsheim

Franklin Barry Gallery / The Frame Shop

617 Massachusetts Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
For information, please contact Don Elliott at the gallery via telephone at 317.822.8455.

In any event, stay safe and stay cool during the upcoming holiday weekend (here in the States anyway).

Cat and Sculpture

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Well, I am back, sort of. I trust you are enjoying the holiday months. I have been working almost non-stop for such a long time, but am happy to say that I am making progress. The book I am writing about my experiences street painting in Italy has now gone to the graphic designer to work her magic. What I have seen thus far looks really, really good and I cannot wait for the day that I can say that the book is READY!

When I returned to my studio after a couple of weeks away, I began again to carve the marble gymnast and discovered that I had a new companion of sorts. No doubt, I will lose a couple of friends with this admission, but I have never been much of a small cat person. Still, people who abandon cats are much lower on my list of favorite things. . Out where I live now, her presence is no accident.

Cat (think Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”) is quite a young cat. She is sweet and has funny markings on her face, with a bushy tail more in line with a raccoon than a kitten her size. Her eyes are more orange than yellow. She has sharp little teeth surrounding that raspy tongue, but surprisingly, her little bites on my fingers and toes do not hurt as much as cat bites in my memory. Perhaps she is only being affectionate.

Cat craves attention, as any abandoned creature would. While I have been stopping my work at times to sit down and cuddle with her a bit, I do not have as much patience in the morning as I might otherwise have. Sadly, with about a month of daily temperatures easily over 100 degrees F., I am no longer working outside in the evenings. I find the air too heavy and my other work has more appeal. So the mornings are precious time and I am feeling quite protective of it, selfishly saving those hours for the marble sculpture.

In any event, progress continues regardless of delays and Cat now has food and water, and sometimes me.

Happy Birthday Möbius Artist

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

It is my 47th birthday today and I find myself thinking about mathematics. Or maybe it is just the morphing of shapes and paths as we affect our own lives and the lives of others based on decisions of what we do and also (and sometimes more importantly) of what we choose NOT to do.

Take a long strip of paper or a ribbon, such as 1” wide by 10” long. As you pick up one end, give it a half twist before attaching it to the other end to form a ring. You will now have a Möbius Strip. Now, pretend you are a little person and go stand on one part of this circular form. Start walking -- either direction, it matters not. Make a mark as you move along -- just so you do not get lost. You will note that if you walk long enough you will reach the point of origin and you will not have crossed an edge to do it, but you will find that your mark lies on both sides of the paper! Named for German mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868), a Möbius Strip only has one side and one edge.

I understand this technology is used in engine belts among other things. That half twist is key to putting a consistent wear and tear on the belt instead of just wearing out one side. Efficient and healthy a little twist can be!

My 2-part stone sculpture ”Möbius Mouth” is part of my "Lips Series." The mouth has a heart shape in the negative space inside the lips. He is carved from a Rattlesnake Limestone from Texas, named after the shape of the shell fossils in the stone. The triangular base enhances the idea of the mathematics of the Möbius lips and is carved from Henna Limestone from Canada. He also has some wonderful fossils that I hope you will discover.

“Möbius Mouth"
Rattlesnake Limestone (Texas)
with Henna Limestone (Canada)
one-of-a-kind
17" h x 22" w x 8.5" d

To see more of this stone sculpture, including images taken during the carving process, please visit: www.borsheimarts.com/sculpture/2006/mobius.htm

So, thank you to all who sent me birthday wishes via e-mail, Facebook, and phone. Let’s get a little twisted! Or stoned – ha! ;-)

Italian Artist Sebastiano Ricci

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Howdy! On a visit to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, last month, I “rediscovered” an Italian artist named Sebastiano Ricci. Inspiring and intimidating other artists can be and I know that I must learn how to work faster. I cannot keep up with my brain! I have so many ideas in my head about art and mathematics in composition that I seem to be finding more and more examples of thoughtfully designed shapes, especially with the figure. Seek and ye shall find . . . an idea as old as mankind.



“Flora”
Sebastiano Ricci
125.3 cm x 153.7 cm (49 5/16 in. x 60 1/2 in.)
Oil on canvas, circa 1712-1716
Part of the Suida-Manning Collection

In Ricci's “Flora” (shown here) I noticed that the angelic figures in the painting surrounded the main figure of the woman in a circular pattern, the positions of their bodies and limbs leading the eye around her and thereby emphasizing her as the subject of the painting. The sign at the Blanton explained what is going on:

"In Ovid's Fasti, the nymph Chloris is seduced by the West Wind, Zephirus, and renamed Flora, goddess of flowers and spring. An important Roman deity, she was associated with voluptuousness. This painting renders the moment before her seduction: as Flora flirts with one putto and suggestively grasps the stem of an iris, Zephirus approaches from behind, indicating his quarry and cautioning silence to another putto. At the right, a vessel spills over with blossoms that portend the result of their union and celebrate their namesake. The design is so equilibrated, the rhythm so elegant, and the handling so rich that a quotation from antique statuary -- the Kneeling Venus -- appears seamless. The painting recalls the great mythological works of sixteenth-century Venice."

Another oil painting that I really enjoy on a much simpler arrangement of shapes is “Venus and Cupid” painted by Ricci in 1700. I like the giant sweeping “S” curve of the gesture of Venus, especially that long and slow-curving leg. It makes me want to ride a sled over snow! And I like the lighting with just enough shadow shapes to keep me interested. But one of my favorite parts is how seemingly natural the “modesty device” comes across -- that lovely white bird whose wing tones are light enough to do the job while the interaction between the two doves hardly makes you notice the function of the one.



If you would like to see more of Sebastiano Ricci’s paintings and read more about attributing art to dead artists, please read my my latest art newsletter

For a while now, I have been working almost every morning and again in the evenings for as many hours as I can stand to be outdoors on my marble sculpture “Gymnast.”. While I have written about various parts of my progress, I have been working here and there on other parts as well, such as her hair, her hands, and refining that difficult-to-reach inner area between her piked torso and legs. My students and colleagues have often heard me say that we tend to draw, paint, or sculpt ourselves. This is not a bad thing, in my view, it is simply part of our individuality. We see the faces and shapes of our family members more than anyone else’s. I suspect these shapes are imprinted into our memories before we even become aware of such things.

I have been fighting this a bit in my marble carving. She keeps having a short torso and she’s got some pretty ambitious hips for the size of the rest of her figure. So, while I work the rest of the composition, I am still trying to carve away the abdomen area and shape the forms there.

Unfortunately, I now have cat-sitting duty away from my studio and while I will take some art with me, I will be using this other home to withdraw a bit and focus on finishing the book I am writing on my life as a streetpainter in Florence, Italy.

So, I am taking a holiday from this blog for the next two weeks or so. I hope you get to swim in an ocean, sea, or river and enjoy this summer heat. I am looking forward to doing that next summer, but for now, I have too much work to do!

Take care and do not give up on me -- I will finish this stone carving in 2011 before I go back to Italy!
Ciao, ciao,
Kelly Borsheim

Stone Carving Tortoise Shell

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Hello again. I have been carving the basic shape for the base of my stone carving “Gymnast” a little bit each day and at some point, it was time to get into a bit of detail. So, out with the crayons and get to drawing.

Before that, I would like to explain that I was inspired to create a kind of turtle to hold up the female figure by a visit to the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy several years ago. That mountainous country has known many different cultures over the centuries and one can still see signs of some of them. The Pitti features a large Egyptian obelisk in the main garden. Each corner is supported by a bronze turtle. What a load those four turtles carry!

Of course, I designed my sculpture a little differently. Instead of four turtles, I will create a four-headed tortoise of sorts. So, in these first two images, I drew the shapes in the shell. Only the next morning, I realized my mistake and redrew the shapes at the bottom of the shell, making them line up in a way more consistent with the real animal. I think the lines were better then -- not so obviously mathematical in the way they lead the eye.





I was afraid that I would find this task tedious, having to repeat so many similar shapes. However, once I got into it, I found myself almost laughing out loud because I was enjoying the process so much. The exposed marble crystals were a delight. I rarely get to carve a lot of texture in my compositions and I may have to rethink that for future stone carving designs.

Oh, and it did occur to me that I should have used a more turtle-shell colored crayon! Hopefully, all of the blue wax will be chiseled off, but one never knows.

Stay cool and thank you for reading!
Kelly Borsheim

Georgetown Texas Summer of Sculpture

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

You are invited to see over 120 sculptures in a variety of materials and styles by over 45 sculptors, including three of my own sculptures (shown here are “The Little Mermaid” in bronze and the marble carving “The Offering”). Organized as the summer exhibition of The Texas Society of Sculptors (TSOS), the Georgetown City Library in central Texas is a wonderful space for viewing 3-d art. There is even a HUGE charging bronze rhinoceros to great you as you enter the library.

Award ceremony and reception: THIS Sunday, July 17
1:00 - 3:00 p.m. on the second floor of the library
Awards will be announced at 1:30 p.m. Live music starts at 2 p.m.

Georgetown City Library
402 W. 8th St. (just west of the courthouse)
Georgetown, Texas 78626

See you there! [Exhibit continues through 23 September 2011.]

Touching Stone

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

One of the most difficult things to do in stone carving is to have two objects touch without making one too long or too short. While I have plenty of carving left to do on the base of my “Gymnast” marble sculpture, it is time to address how the hips of the figure will rest upon the turtle shell that holds her up.

Also, I have been working on many different parts of the figure - from hair to toes to her chest and neck and her hands. It is time to refine the shape of her hips as I figure out the connection to what is below. Categorically, my work falls somewhere between reality and abstraction. So, while I will not be creating an exact replica of the soft flesh of even the strongly developed gluts of an athlete as it is pressed over a hard form, I do want a great line for many viewpoints. I want the eye to move along, and I want the viewer’s hand to pass over the marble figure and feel a soft sensuality in the cool stone.


While I had planned last night to go into town for a late night concert of Indian music, I decided to stay home instead and photograph my crotch. That sounds like a lot more fun than it was. But after I got cleaned up and lost all of the day’s stone dust, I donned a pair of tights and tried to emulate the pose. This is part of the problem: I do not want this sculpture to look like me. However, when I am carving, it is actually my body that is the most available. I am happy that I have no neighbors nearby since I often tend to feel the shape of my own muscles and then draw what I felt onto the stone, adapting the anatomy to fit the work.

But my fingers are too thick to really “see” how the shape feels as the soft flesh folds over a bit of the hard tortoise shell. So, I needed either an interesting set of mirrors or some self-portraits. Hmmm. Scary. But this connection is very important. I asked John Borsheim, the mechanical engineer, to talk to me a bit about how much I could cut into the stone before it became so much like an hourglass that the sculpture would snap in two at that point if there is any stress while moving the stone carving. Better to err on the side of caution. This is also part of the reason for creating the turtles heads UP off of the bottom surface, while the legs will help create a circular base. More on that later . . .


I have not been happy with the hips, feeling that they are a bit large and malformed for a figure that size. I began to feel that the hips were getting too much vertical length and thus went back to my original measurement and cut off much stone. Measuring has always been a challenge to me. I am not sure what these images may tell you, but the hips will start to pull in more to give the pike position that noticeable “V” shape. In the last image (taken at dusk, hence the bluish cast), I can clearly see that I still must cut off some of that thigh as it gets closer to the torso. Anyway, I marked it in the near dark and will continue to shape the stone.


I am at the “dangerous” stage of my stone carving process with this marble sculpture. I say “dangerous” because I am almost to the point in which my mind can fully imagine the finished work. The problem is, the “Gymnast” is physically far from completed. At this stage, my mind becomes restless and my thoughts shift to thinking of the challenges I will have with the next stone. You can see the possible destructive nature of this situation, right?

The good news is that with all of my years of carving stone, I know full well that I will move beyond this step in due time and fall in love again with my current marble. I just hope there is enough time because she is the largest and most difficult carving I have yet attempted and I want to finish her desperately.