kadmium

Class tonight basically involved each student deciding which of two masks he or she wanted to carve. Our choices are “Spirit of Driftwood”, which is a very simple mask with one difficult compound curve or one of the set of “Good Man/Bad Man” masks, which is considerably more complex. (If I can find images of each to scan, I will.) Bob and Joe encouraged people with little or no experience in carving to start with the “Spirit of Driftwood”, but of course I couldn’t. I had to start with the complicated one. I actually think it’ll be okay because the primary difference between the two is the complexity of the forms, not the complexity of the carving itself.

We’re working with Sitka spruce, which is a nice soft wood.

I made some decent progress, but felt a little adrift. We don’t have a model to work from, just some photocopies of face-on black and white photos that have very little depth to them, so it’s hard to get a feel for the contours of the masks. I think I’m also suffering from some trepidation about removing the amount of wood that will be required for the mask to take shape. This is the problem with reductive work. Once you screw up, you’re screwed. You can’t glue a new piece of wood on. At least with steel, if you add something you don’t like you can cut it off and smooth the scar with a grinder. That’s okay. It’s why I’m here.

I roughed in the brow, the cheeks and a started on defining the nose.