Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog

 It’s a 50 degree day in mid winter and the river is rising.  I tried to make the best of the few hours I had to work outdoors this weekend.  It could have been sunnier, but at least it stayed warm and dry.  I made two figures and photographed them at the Falls of the Ohio.  Here’s the largest of the two in progress with a couple of old friends over wintering in the background.

I decided to try to use two of the bigger Styrofoam chunks I had stored at the studio site.  Eventually, the river is going to cover this area and so it’s use it or lose it time.  I have enough stuff in my bag to make quick decisions and there’s lots of driftwood to use everywhere around me.  The Ohio River seems restless and the constant waves have driftwood and logs pinned to the shoreline.  To make the features on this head I used mismatched fishing bobbers for eyes.  The asymmetry in the eyes makes for a more intense effect.  The large nose is the plastic head off of a toy golf club.  The ears are pieces of Styrofoam.  The mouth is suggested by a broken toy sand shovel I stuck into the foam.  I found some plastic collar to transition the head into the body and the rest is driftwood sticks.

I recycled the big Styrofoam piece from an earlier work made last spring.  It’s a little more battered the second time around.  When I added the head and legs, it made this figure taller than me.  I posed it around the studio site and then photographed it near the water to see if I could find more light.  Eventually, I moved the figure back to my studio area and posed it next to the second figure I made today.  I will show you that one next time around.

I had two people approach me while I was working who are also Falls enthusiasts and had seen my art out here before.  One young woman, an art student at the University of Cincinnati, was looking for driftwood.  She planned to pull a mold from the wood towards the goal of creating a bronze sculpture of her own.  After exchanging first names, the second conversation had a turn of its own.  The gentleman told me that he too had come down to the Falls for years and had seen other projects of mine.  For awhile, he said that a picture he took of one of my Styrofoam heads was his image of himself on his Facebook page!  I wonder which one it was and don’t know why I didn’t think to ask him at the time?  Imagine, having a face good enough for Facebook!