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Although this sculpture below is far from finished, you can see the general form and feel of the piece. There will be more detail in the eyes, nose, mouth, and hair, as well as a firming up of the movement. I plan on doing a mold of this piece for an edition of fifteen bronzes. In addition I will do several bronzewood melds from the same mold.
The original piece of wood for this was about 95 lb., it is pictured here below. The reason so much wood was required to make this 4lb sculpture is that I wanted symmetry of grain as well as the rippled pattern that will be across the majority of the face. The grain is really spectacular and the rich golden color of the West Texas Juniper will really stand out once the piece is finished and oiled.

The log pictured below will be a fluid medley of twists and turns with five swallows in flight. The major portion of the mass in the piece will be the swallows. That means a lot of negative spaces and air will be a part of this sculpture as well the birds and ribbons of wood.  At this point, the piece can be either a wall or a free standing sculpture. This piece will have a lot of the same feel as the sculpture on the front of my book Parables, "Songbirds On The Wind."

This is another branch off the massive tree that the sculpture "Bride" came from. It grew on the side of a butte down in Palo Duro Canyon and is probably close to 1,500-1,700 years old. The tree was so massive that I first mistook it for a large gray rock. Both these pieces were dead wood branches from the living tree. It took an extra hour and a half to prune these off in a manner that would not injure the remaining portion of the tree. I must mention the fact that once they fell, it was a tremendous effort to drag them up to where we started. After getting back to square one, we then had to hike them out to the truck. I thank God for strong backs, especially the ones attatched to good friends.

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