Tag Archives: paper sculpture

The Cicadas Are Coming, the Cicadas Are Coming!

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We are about to be beset by bugs. A lot of things bug me but these bugs are brutal beasts, screaming day and night after rising from the earth like made up extras in a day of the dead Hollywood film.

Cicadas

Every 17 years, give or take a few, swarms of extraordinarily ugly bugs search for mates, make babies and die. For about six weeks the males make a clicking sound and when billions of them click together, there is a clicking, hissing, screeching, screaming noise that travels in overwhelming waves throughout many of North Carolina’s forests, blocking out all other sounds. No outdoor concerts, or barbecues, or pool parties. Did you ever try to scoop a billion bugs out of a pool?

The birds do their level best but they can’t eat them all, so dead cicadas are all over the place. On our houses, cars, driveways, streets, and our heads. A monster-mess of ugly bugs on steroids.

Basic Beetle

Bugs are in everyday language. Bug out, bug off, you bug me, we’ve been bugged, they’ve got bugs, you’ve got bugs, (what’s worse I’ve got bugs), sbuggetti, bugaroni, may the bug be with you.

Beetles! Now there’s a colorful bunch o’ bugs for you. Like little, hard shell painter’s palettes with six legs and an appetite for nature’s unwary little creatures. If you sit on them, they become butt biting bugs.

Stag Beetle

As long as I’m talking about bugs, let me tell you what is really bugging me. I am bugged by bozos with the authority to damage education in the lower grades from kindergarten to the eighth grade. Eliminate art and music from the mix, they say; they’re just a waste of time that could be spent larnin their sums. But be sure to keep the sports programs. Sure, sports are as important as art and music, but not more important.

Everyone should be athletic for life, but a very small percent of the population become professional athletes. However, comma, there are millions of designers in every occupation. Graphic designers, industrial designers, fashion designers, auto designers, interior designers, electronic designers, toy designers, game designers…I don’t have room to list them all, there are hundreds. The point is, little leagues in every sport are necessary, and eliminating art and music is killing the little league of art, design and music.

Lady Bugs changing spot colors

By the time students enter high school, it is too late for the basics of the arts. They are interested in other things, including the other sex, and have no experience of the arts to help them decide whether to enter the profession. I can’t name one thing that is designed, manufactured, marketed, advertised and sold to those bozos, who are not aware that every thing they see, wear, drive, live in, and enjoy, has been given its form by the hand of a professional artist.

If all of the designers in every occupation would join together, they would be the biggest political pressure group in the country, hell, in the whole damn world. We probably couldn’t run the country but we could sure design it.

Thanks for visiting me…

leo

The Weaverville Art Safari open studios tour is upon us again, April 27 & 28th.
For information, visit the web site.

Stag Beetle 18×30″ unframed $1200
Basic Beetle 15×24″ unframed $900

My Indian Summer

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Dear Reader,

Indian Summer is defined as a period of unusually warm, dry weather occurring in late autumn, or a period of happiness or success occurring late in life. With my 80th breathing down my neck, I have a one man show, collage classes scheduled with a long waiting list, a couple of lectures on stuff people think I know, I’m healthy, and have a lovely dog.

Feather Color Wheel

This is my Indian summer. I hope my luck lasts, because this is the only game in town, and I’m gonna play it close to the vest, right down to the last “Aces & Eights,” just like Wild Bill Hiccup!

I keep Rosinante, my winged pony, tied up just outside, and I hear her pawing the ground and pulling at the restraints. I never know when I’ll be flown away to my next quest, but I’m ready as ever, and willing to joust with windmills again.

Winged Pony

The soft breezes of my Indian summer, and the hazy red, mountain sunsets, bring back boyhood memories of hot October days, then a cold snap and a huge November snowfall. Indian summer is fugitive, it escapes, and nothing lasts forever.

I’ve been asked, how long will my paper sculptures last? I reply that they will be in landfills for a thousand years, maybe more, if the weather holds.

Feathers in wind

The red feather composition is monochromatic with subtle variations of red orange (the hottest color in the spectrum), with a small amount of green (its complement), to support it and complete the complementary color scheme. Touches of blue are for interest only and only enhance the scheme.

The twelve-tone feather color wheel is painted in full intensity, (the pure quality of color), and is one of many sculptures using eagle feathers as an icon. I am fascinated with the possibilities of feathers as icon, and they were the subjects of my first venture into fine, or personal, art and reflect the Sioux influence on my life.

Carousel Cat

At this time of my Indian summer, I am content as a cat on a carousel. The warm wind is blowing, the leaves are changing to warm colors in a cool forest, and I wake up each morning on the right side of grass…

Thanks for visiting me again…

leo

I’m never content with what I know.
Only with what I can find out.

The Feather Color Wheel is available for $1000.
Two other similar sculptures in the Feathers in the Wind series, are available for $2450 each, at the Grovewood Gallery.

Remember, the Weaverville Art Safari is this weekend!
Come see me and the other artists up on Horseshoe Ridge.

My exhibit is still in its first month at the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC. Click here if you are interested in my collage classes. New classes are being added for January and February.

This is my lovely dog, Stray. Cookie klepto, rabbit runner, and my constant, no-holds-barred, buddy.

Stray