President’s Message May-June 2016

From the President…. 

The second annual International Sculpture Day was this April 24th. Maybe you had work on display or took the opportunity, if you weren’t tied to your display, to visit venues displaying sculpture. Maybe next year one of you can help NWSSA play a larger role in organizing the display of STONE sculpture on International Sculpture Day.

To celebrate the day this year, Pat Barton took the opportunity to drag me to as many venues as we could visit in one day on Whidbey and Camano Islands. That included seeing Hank Nelson’s Cloudstone Sculpture Park. If you ever find yourself with the opportunity to visit Cloudstone, take it. Or at least Google carve.new-site.xyz/HankNelson. The first item up should be “Cloudstone revealed at last” by Tracy Powell.

On our way to Hank’s place on Whidbey Island, we stopped by the Freehand Art Studios and saw a whole lot of NWSSA members’ work. There was much more variety from each artist than I am used to finding in the typical gallery setting. That’s the cool think about visiting an artist’s work place, you get to see it all.

On our drive back, we caught the end of the last day of the hand carving workshop held at Kara Matzke’s on Camano Island. Sue Taves was the instructor, and there were new faces (Oregon) and old hands (Puget Sound and Canada) and lots of learning and good work accomplished at the workshop.

The long day gave me cause to reflect. Do something new; every stone is new. Do something challenging; every stone is challenging. Do something hard; stone. Whatever you choose to do, practice, practice, practice. Do it with mentorship, do it with flourish, and do it with community.

Learn Much, Share with many, and Carve Proud…

Carl