Exploring.
Although most of our time in North Carolina was spent working on the yard, we were able to sneak in a whole day of enjoying the mountains. We took the Blue Ridge over to Mount Mitchell State Park, and since we forgot our walking sticks, I chose the kiddie trail. There was still ice on the trail, and being short, there were a few tricky spots for me to navigate.
From there, we drove to Weaverville, and popped into a few of their art galleries, and rounded out the afternoon with a Mountain Eclair!
Before we left for North Carolina, Jim was working on an infinity table. He decided it wasn’t quite perfect to put a table top on, and turned it into an art piece. Although I think metal art makes wonderful yard art, Jim was insistent it go in the gallery. I think he’ll need to make more for the yard 🙂
I had an aha! that Jim was able to execute for me. Rick and Val left behind a lot of cut off pieces from his glass sculptures, and there are drain tubes running down the mountain, so I thought why not make a nice waterfall with all of the colorful glass. It worked so well, Jim made a second one where there were more drain tubes.
In case you were wondering what I’ve been working on… after getting back home, I set out to attempt to cast shoes. This is the first one I tried, it’s not as easy as I had hoped, and I’ll try a couple different styles to figure out the best process.
- For this child’s loafer, I created a clay ankle/foot to fill in the shoe.
- Then I mounted the shoe to a piece of vinyl so the plaster wouldn’t run under the sole.
- After the plaster was set, I pulled the shoe out of the mold. It wasn’t easy – in fact, I learned that soles are VERY thick, VERY hard material. I ended up using metal shears to cut it so I could grab it and pull it out!
- Then I filled in the glass and fired it in the kiln.
I still need to do the final clean up, here it is:
