WHEN LIFE SHAKES YOU UP - SHAKE UP YOUR LIFE

FIND YOUR ART GALLERY OF DREAMS

GaryO


I've often seen the big picture while working for others, much to their benefit. For One company I put together and spear headed a IT program that networked thousands of offices in half the time and at a huge reduction in down time. While at another I pushed for an out of the box application of their technology and expand outside of their radio only market and into digital advertising on movie theater screens before the movie starts. For New York City I was part of a team that took them from a software roll out that was doing one job center every four years to a software roll-out that was four centers per year. At my last company I designed and rolled out a web application that stopped the wasteful practice of producing and printing a regulation book that was outdated by the time it made it to the staff and made it instantly available and up-datable online within days of the regulation issuance. After the cutbacks that lead to my layoff at the MTA. I found myself looking harder than I've ever had to look for a job in one of the worst recessions this country has ever faced.

I was getting more and more disheartened, but I had something that kept me going, my sculpting. With much encouragement from my family and friends, I began making a business plan for something that I loved and was very talented at, sculpture. Green Whisker Works was born.

Green Whisker Works is my New York City-based sculpture studio, committed to creating indelible sculpted pet portraiture.  My purpose is to deliver high-quality custom artwork to those looking to have a lasting portrait of their beloved pets, not just by creating an accurate physical representation, but also conveying every animal's unique essence and personality in the sculpture.

After Dawn and Barbara asked for some guest bloggers, I suggested to Barbara that I could open up my studio to everyone out in DRL land. Show them how an unintended shake up was  perhaps a lifeline to a dream.  She thought it would be a good idea as insight and inspiration are certainly themes around the lounge. 


Recently Green Whisker Works, my NY-Based studio, had a contest on FaceBook. The contest was simple, go on the Green Whisker Works page do the "like" thing and then post a picture of your pet. After the deadline, I put everyone's name that posted in a hat a randomly pulled out one lucky winner. The winner was Brenda Dungan Edmonds and her little dog Nacho. So she sent me lots of wonderful pictures of this cute little guy and I set to work on immortalizing him.

Day One

 I start the sculpture by building an armature. This is made from a wooden base and a wire frame and balled up newspaper roughly shaped like the subject, in this case Nacho. It serves to reduce the overall amount of clay needed to make the sculpture and it also acts like a skeleton to provide a strong stable foundation for the sculpture.

Using a few of the photographs I begin to add clay to the sculpture. I don't need many photos at this point, mainly the mug shots front and side as well as a couple of 3/4 shots. I am not worried about details at this point, so I don't need many. Later I will use more of the reference photos provided  (and you can not have too many pictures of your subject) toward the end of making the sculpture when I am working on the details. At this point I begin to rough in the clay. It can look a bit creepy at this point missing the eyes and the structure not really being there yet.

Here I have him roughed in a bit more and I'm getting ready to add the eyes. I feel the eyes are very important in creating a sculpture. That quote about "being windows to the soul." I feel is the foundation to figurative sculpture. This is true if I'm making a human or an animal. Maybe even more so with our pets. I know much of our communication with our pets can be expressed through eyes. So I take the time to measure using the photos as reference and transfer that to the clay sculpture.

So here is Nachos progress after day one, not there yet, but you can see he is starting to emerge from the clay.