Preview of work to date

  

 The face has  a distortion on the right side of the mouth .It is slightly higher  and the right cheek is not as full.Also the eye needs attention to the depth of the iris.

face

Adding band of clay at the top of veil

Adding veil

SALA Judith Rolevink's Open Sculpture Studio this weekend.

I would like to invite the public to come and see a working sculpture studio this weekend. It is part of the South Australian Living Artist program .Come and enjoy the sculptures on display and have a wine and nibbles while you are here.
Opening times are 11;00am to 4:00pm this Saturday and Sunday, 20th and 21st August 2011.
Follow the signs on the gate. All welcome.
The venue is at 20 Greenway Drive, Surrey Downs 5126 SA.

Refining the face

I am working on a bust of Mary MacKillop and it is progressing nicely.
I have been working on the face and a crucifix which she will eventually hold.

Smoothing the face with a wet brush.

I always work the head without hair first and the last addition is the hair but in this case she will have a coif and veil covering her head.

I have made arrangements to travel to Melbourne to patinate the "Mary MacKillop" bronze for Sydney and the foundry and I will travel to Sydney to install the sculpture at Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel  in late September.

The commemoration and unveiling will take place on the 1st anniversary of Mary's sainthood on the 17th October 2011 at the Memorial Chapel, North Sydney.

Little 12 year old Dancer (Tribute to Degas) Bronze and Granite, 107cm

This weekend the St Ignatius Art Show will take place at Norwood,  SA with Ang and I both showing work , another great Art Show to see.The school holds a Gala Opening on Friday evening.

The two sculptures I have for sale will be "Little 12 year old Dancer" and "Nude Torso"

Nude Torso, Bronze;steel, 70cm.

Please note all images are copyright.

SALA Sculpture Studio Open Days

Work on the new Mary MacKilllop

SALA is here again and I am opening my studio to the public at 20 Greenway Drive, Surrey Downs, South Australia.
The opening times are Saturday and Sunday, 13 & 14 August and 20th & 21st August 2011, 11am - 4pm.
It would be great to see you there..

New bust of Mary MacKillop

At the moment I am working on a bust of Mary MacKillop (yes again) and I am posting a few photos of the work so far.

I would like to be able to offer this sculpture to schools who want a sculpture for a prayer garden without the cost of buying a bronze. We'll see how it goes.
I am happy to talk about sculpture and how I go about making large pieces. I thought students may like to see my working methods.

Bushwalking in the Adelaide Hills and SALA

Koala on walk

My friend Cathy and I had decided to do our longer walks on Mondays and keep Wednesday walks shorter, as we both have other things to do.
We met last Monday and decided to walk across Black Hill but take a track that we haven't been on before.
The first grade is fairly steep but as you get to the top a little way along is another fork which takes you along to the "Orchard track" which we did for the first time the week before, and the track is fairly steep over the hill just about straight down to Montacute Road on the other side.
We found another track called "Eagles Court" Track" leading off this one that seemed to be very overgrown and looked as though it hasn't been in use lately.
The weather was glorious and the sky was deep blue so we had a beautiful day for winter walking as the temperature was 19 degrees C.
We saw another track to our right on the way back and thought it may lead back to close to where we were heading but when it turned to go downhill again we realized we needed to climb back up the hill off the track and we came across a koala sitting at the base of a tree.

Although I was able to stroke him he was fairly skittish and started to climb up a small sapling about 4 feet off the ground and proceeded to poo. Cathy took some photos with her phone camera as it is quite unusual for a koala to be on the ground during the day, they are usually  high up in the gum trees asleep.

I called into the TTG Craft Workshops to see how the firing of the big gas kiln worked out. I felt the work looked fairly heavily reduced as the clay colour was grey on my mugs.

I'm still needing a lot of practice with brushwork, oops I just noticed a patch I forgot to paint, funny I only just saw it.

SALA has just published all the exhibitions and open workshops and the opening of my workshop was in the publication.All welcome, come and have a glass of wine with me and look at my new studio and see some of my work on display.
The dates are 13th and 14th August and 20th and 21st August open from 11.00am till 4.00pm.
See you there.

TTG Club Firing

I spent a few hours out at the Tea Tree Gully Craft Workshop club today whilst the girls were firing the big gas kiln for the second time since it has been rebuilt.
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Looking at the kiln log during the firing.

Ang was  firing a raku kiln and also keeping a eye on the gas firing.

Jill working

I put 6 mugs in my own kiln firing (which I had thrown and bisqued about 15 years ago). About time I glazed them. It's funny because I haven't glazed pottery for so long, I really had to think what I was doing.

 
I glazed the second head I had decorated, and fired it in my kiln at my studio, and was very disappointed with the results, although the clear glaze worked well. I'll have to practice my brushwork a lot more before I work on something I want to keep.

The head slipped on it's ring during firing so it had to be chipped off at the bottom.

Belinda and her daughter pose for me, for a drawing I need to produce for a proposal.
As you can see it is a beautiful winters day, the sun was glorious.

Last of all I had made a small statuette of Mary MacKillop, made moulds,  cast it in porcelain , underglazed it and fired it at the same time with the head and mugs.

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I am  showing some work  at St Ignatius Art Show during SALA festival in August. I am putting the torso I had cast in bronze into the show but will need to see if they will accept it . There has been some rejections with nude work of late  so I will have to wait and see .

Bronze Torso for art show.

New work

I have had a couple of heads sitting waiting for some attention . I modelled them  after reading how Tom Bartel makes hollow sculptures by coiling the head instead of working and modelling a solid head and later hollowing the head at the  leather hard stage.
At the time I was waiting for the Mary MacKillop commission to be agreed upon, so I made these two heads to try out the coiling idea.
The first was trying to make a head that was pleasant.
The second one I had been playing around with the thoughts of portraying ecstasy as portrayed in "Bernini's St Cecilia", so I had eyes closed and mouth slightly open.

I always wanted to glaze them with colour and so I finally decided to give each one a theme. 

Test plate trying out underglazes

The first I called it "Spring" and I intended to paint spring flowers all over the head with underglazes. The second one, because of the expression, I thought it would be good as "Autumn". I had collected a whole lot of  beautifully shaped fallen yellow leaves from some Gincko trees outside UNISA in the city and they had appealed to me so I drew them all over the second head, painted with underglazes and fired it with a clear glaze at 1100c oxidation. I forgot to photograph it before I glazed it.


I was disappointed with the results as I used a painterly approach and the underglazes really did not blend.
I have painted the second head and need to use the club glaze as I haven't enough glaze left in the bucket.
So I haven't fired it yet.
What do you think of the result? I would like to put them in an upcoming Art Show but "Autumn " is a little confronting.

Updated my photo

My husband took a few photos of me as I felt the photo I have been using is rather old and I needed a recent one.I was amazed how old I look and I suppose I have resisted looking too closely at my image of late.Needless to say I really wasn't impressed with what was the best of the photos,( am I really that heavy in the face and so-oo matronly?).
Last winter I managed to loose a few kilo with bush walking, jogging and exercise, but getting back into sculpting and not exercising the past six months has taken its toll and I have regained the extra weight again.I'm so depressed.
I was cleaning out my cupboards and came across a portrait I did at TAFE college half a dozen years ago and was impressed that I had painted it so long ago,(I spent a year not dying my hair).I was trying to relate how I viewed myself as a sculptor, hence my hands in front of the portrait.

Thought I might post it to show with new photo.