Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog

In the week since I last visited the Falls of the Ohio, we had enough rain for the Ohio River to rise once again.  The willow trees nearest to the bank were a few feet underwater.  I found the remains of Watchful Willie from a couple of posts ago as well as “fresh” polystyrene scattered all along the shoreline.  I only had a few hours to work this day, so I tried to make the best of it.  Feeling the sunshine again was alone worth the trip, but I saw and made enough stuff to allow me several posts for the week.  Here is my latest Styrofoam creation made spontaneously as the sun was setting.

Rummaging around my studio cache of materials under the willow trees I improvised this Little Deer.  It turned out more naturalistic than I anticipated.  Its head is a triangular-shaped piece of thin insulation foam, while the rest of its body is more found Styrofoam.  As is my habit, I have not tried to carve or shape the foam the river has given me.  It’s more about being choosy about what forms I use to begin with.  The work is held together with sharpened pegs.  I did, however, shorten the sticks I used for the legs with my pocket knife.  I attempted to create “eyes” by piercing the blue foam with a small wooden pin, but it left the hole you see and I liked it and left it as is.  The ears are made of pine bark and the tail is another piece of wood.  What’s different this time is that I didn’t try to incorporate another plastic element into the piece.

I walked west along the Indiana side of the river stopping every once in a while to record an image in situ with Little Deer.  The way the light plays with the “eye-hole” causes it to glow and gives it another spark of life.  It made me recall the Henry Moore retrospective I saw at the Guggenheim Museum in New York years ago.  How Moore was able to use a hole as a form in his sculptures remains amazing.  The waves coming ashore threaten to sweep the deer away, but I placed it just out of reach.  Still, the sense that the work is vulnerable comes through the photographs.

One last image with the Little Deer.  This time I set it down next to the fruit of an Osage Orange tree to give it some sense of scale.  Some folks know these as “hedge apples”.  Since today is my sister Pat’s birthday, I would like to dedicate this piece to her.  I hope you had a nice day!  The parting image is something I’m beginning to see with more regularity now.