Another day of adventure at the Falls of the Ohio and made all the more memorable since I had company this time. My good friend Jefferson, his son Holden, and my son Michael made the short trip across the Second Street Bridge to have fun and collect sticks. Wood is something the Falls has in abundance and Jeff has a purpose in mind for his sticks. He wants to support a net over his goldfish pond to keep out leaves and all the cleaning that results when they get in the water. Jeff always seems to have a purpose or job to do. The boys decided to collect wood and construct some kind of fort. That has been their prefered activity at the Falls for as long as they have been coming out here. I, on the other hand, prefer to play and I made a figure to accompany us. I call him the Dancing Man and here are a few images from our day together.
Here are front and back views of this figure. He’s made from Styrofoam, sticks, plastic, and aluminum all found in the park. Finding branches and roots that have the right gesture to them is what helps give this work some sense of motion. I like it when I find a piece of foam that isn’t so static in form. The body of Dancing Man has some torque to it that further enhances the implied motion and helps make it a more interesting sculpture in the round. The limbs also help animate the figure and lead your eye to the head which has the most detail invested in it. This guy looks surprised like he wasn’t expecting to get his feet wet!
Looking through the day’s images, this one is my favorite of the Dancing Man series. There was enough moisture in the sand that it reflected the back light in this interesting way. At the moment, it seems that there are more washed up tires along the shoreline than is usual. One can always find a tire or two, but after the last bout of high water, it’s like sea turtles that have come along way across the river just to find this certain stretch of beach to haul themselves out on to land again.
Dancing Man ventured too close to Michael and Holden’s fort and was captured. This image does a good job of giving you some idea of the scale of my Styrofoam figure. Michael’s in the 8th grade now and Holden is a year behind him. I’m glad they are good friends and I know it pleases Jeff as well. I first met him when we were undergraduate art students at Murray State University. Our families have remained close. Jeff is a wonderful artist in his own right and has become a middle school art teacher in a neighboring county. I am going to use Dancing Man for an exhibit I’m participating in this weekend. I’m also looking forward to my Bluegrass Bioneers talk the same day. Two separate events both involving my art. It must be serendipity because it sure wasn’t planned out that way! Final image is of the guys by their improvised fort. I’ll catch up with everyone later in what will prove to be a noteworthy week for me.
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