President’s Message Mar-Apr 2015

We have a strong and supportive community that shares its hard-won knowledge. That support combined with your creative effort has produced sculpture worth sharing with the world, which is why you are now being asked display at so many outstanding and different venues. Many of you are submitting pieces for consideration and I know there’s many more of you with work that I’ve seen at symposiums, studios, and galleries that deserves to be shown to the public. Please consider taking the opportunity to submit your work to one of the upcoming shows. It’s easy to put a submission together with a quick visit to our web site:  Calls-for-Artists, download the word document, fill in the info and send it off to Cyra Jane, so the public can get to see (and buy) your work.

Speaking of our strong community, Ken Barnes is challenging 5 artists to rough out (or finish) 5 pieces during the Camp Brotherhood Symposium (July 11th to the 18th – the registration form is up on the web and you can now early bird register). It’s a tough challenge, last year he actually roughed out 4 and a half pieces (one of the stones had an “integrity problem”), just to see if it could be done. His comment to me is that organizing to do it while at Camp-B, and having pieces roughed out afterwards, created a process where a lot got done. Ken’s looking to do it again this year and don’t be surprised if you get a call from him. 

Ken’s challenge is on the edge of another member’s concern about finishing a piece that you start. Dan Colvin proposed a great idea to help some folks along the way: start a “Finisher’s Club”. The idea is simple, set a date (or many dates) to meet in your studio (or a friend’s studio) and talk about (or better yet, work on) a piece that you want to get to a finished state. The peer pressure alone is worth a lot. To help this idea along the way, how about declaring  Saturday April 25^th, 2015 “Finishers Day.” Call up a friend, dredge out that piece languishing in the stone pile, and get it done.

Be Mindful, Positive and Carve Proud,

Carl