Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog

I had the itch to make a larger figure today, but only had a few hours to do it in.  I reached my outdoor studio and was elated to find that someone had left me a couple presents.  Two very abstract sculptures made with the materials I had left behind.  Here are what they looked like:

Not exactly my style, but I appreciate the effort.  In the six years I’ve been working out here only a half dozen or so anonymous works have been made with the materials I’ve salvaged off the river’s edge and left on site.    Here’s the piece I quickly put together and photographed.

With walnut and bingo dauber eyes this guy rode out the short rain shower with me.  We have been having some uncharacteristically cool and sunny days that have been picture perfect.  Unfortunately for me, they don’t seem to be occurring when I’m actually at the Falls.  I did a bit of slipping and sliding on the mud surface as I posed this piece along the riverbank.  There is this site that has all these abandoned car and truck tires and I wanted to see if I could make  an interesting image on location.

As I was moving this piece around and photographing it, I was approached by two local guys.  “Delante” on the left and his friend “Mikey” asked me if I could take their picture standing next to the figure.  At least it will give a better idea of scale.  They were moving down the shoreline looking for stuff to get into.  I later ran into them again with some of their friends and they were complaining of being “bored”.  That’s something I’ve heard my own sons say before and they know it always gets a rise out of me.  Life is too short to get bored!  You could always make Styrofoam figures like me for instance!  Now there’s an antidote for boredom.  One last image…this one is of two friends fishing and walking on water.