Concrete

These quirky little objects, the tallest of which is about 7," were recently donated to a local (in my neighborhood, actually) not-for-profit organization, The Living Arts & Science Center (LASC), to be included in their annual art auction fund raiser. Donating art to charitable auctions is a sometimes contentious subject among artists and deserves a discussion of it's own. Since this writing is about the art work, I'll leave that for another time.

I've been intrigued by concrete as an art medium for several years and belong to a Google Group called Artconcrete that discusses the subject. The group was started by Canadian artist and jeweler, Andrew Goss. Check out his blog at http://artconcrete.blogspot.com/ for information and links if you are interested. He's done a great job of showing the potential for the medium, including writing a book geared toward small scale work, titled "Concrete Handbook for Artists," also available through his web sites.

The bud vases were some of my first experiments and I had tons of fun doing them. Along with concrete, they incorporate found laboratory glass (I'm a hopeless scavenger treasure-hunter), tile grout, copper leaf and wire and a chemical patina. Maybe I can go into the process more another time. I kept to a smaller scale both for manageable experimentation and practical working conditions. Everything was done in my regular painting/design space where setup and clean up are major issues. Concrete dust and buckets of water are not entirely compatible with paint, paper and computers! I've sold several through galleries in Lexington and Chicago but this is their first really public outing. Unless you count the ETSY store that I neglected into auto-extinction.

The 6 6/8" diameter rings in the photo to the right were among my first trials. No other use for them has been found to date, but I'm looking! The shape resulted from found plastic packaging that I used for a mould. The colors are from different pigments , aggregates and finishes.

In the last photo, an ancient-future, radio-wanna-be, rock-boat, is just a playful temporary construction made from pieces of my first disastrous attempts with concrete. TIP: make plenty of room for failure, it's so instructive - and can be fun!

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