Blue Sloth

Wednesday Night

The weather is warming, the rain is falling. I am out having a glass of wine and sketching cockpit interiors for imaginary space ships. I am building a full scale Jedi Starfighter for my son in the backyard. Because I can. Because I love him. Because I would have loved one when I was six. Because he will be the only person in the world with a full-scale Jedi Starfighter.

I'm sure Industrial Light and Magic has destroyed their plywood mockup, since there are no more movies planned. Which means he will have the most substantial and permanent Jedi Starfighter in the world.

Do I get to transcend "nerd" status by actually building things full-scale for my kids and then sitting back and enjoying the amazing sight of them climbing in, on, and around things I've created?

If your answer is, "No it means you're an even bigger nerd!" as was just insinuated by the pair of bankers who just inquired what I'm doing typing away on a MacBook Pro in the middle of a wine bar, my response is . . .

Good

Amazing Responses

South Main Project: Update 8

Wow, just amazing responses so far to yesterday's Help Me post. I'm just blown away. Thank you! I will address all of them as the week progresses.

Tonight I am working in my studio as long as I can handle it - which will probably be until my fingers will no longer function due to the cold. Wife creature is away for the next few days and I have an impending "mid-point" meeting with my clients, so it's imperative that I push myself as hard as I can.

I ran out of oxygen this afternoon, drove into town to refill the tank, and three hours later I have burned through all my acetylnne. So first thing tomorrow I will head back into town to replace that tank as well. You burn through fuel at an insane rate when you are using the cutting torch.

I almost cut an entire 4' by 12' sheet of steel into tiny pieces, and I am beginning the even more arduous task of bending each and every one with a clamp and my hands.

I sit on a milk crate outside my studio with one foot on the base of the clamp and feed the small edges of the steel into the mouth of the clamp, applying downward force every half inch or so to slowly bend the steel into curving shapes. Then I rotate the piece 120 degrees to the next corner and repeat until the piece is bent to my satisfaction.

Not the most fun part of my creature creation process, but important; I need thousands of different sizes and shapes to piece it all together over the next two months.

I have run inside to cook a pizza for the beasties, check on their chores, and upload this picture.

Help Me

In the past I've asked for help from time to time from my readers. The response is always interesting, insightful, and unexpected - ranging from indignant 'How dare you ask something back from your readers!' to the amazingly sweet and profound.

We've delved into a wide range of topics: the guts of writing a cover letter for a novel, what it means to blog, the best way to potty-train a beastie, how to properly operate a washing machine, to the inner workings of my guts themselves. In the process, you my readers have helped me keep my head above water as an adult while I've subsumed myself in the process of raising three very young children.

A tip of my cap to you.

I am now deep into the process or building a monumental sculpture and restarting a part of my life that has been dormant for nearly nine years. But it's more than just starting a part of my life, because for the longest time it was who I was. I was a sculptor.

Yes I was this and I was that, and I liked to do such and such, but when it came down to it and I shook your hand - I was an artist. What do you do? I sculpt.

And I got lots of strange looks. Sculpt what? And many further questions. None of which I felt compelled to answer completely because it really didn't matter. I wasn't a banker the way a person who works at a bank puts on his nice clothes and goes off to work to make a living. I was an artist because that's what I loved to do, and that passion carried over into my character, into the rest of my life. It was part of who I was, and I was comfortable as that person - to the point that it didn't matter if anyone else understood. It was just who I was.

Now when I shake your hand, I'm a dad. More specifically, I'm Kelly and Alex and Isabel's dad and it's the greatest job in the world and the most important thing I've ever done, and the most important thing I ever will do.

What do you do? I'm a full-time dad. And I get lots of strange looks. That little pause followed by an 'Oh . . .' And many further questions. None of which I feel compelled to answer completely because it really doesn't matter. Because I have given myself completely to this 'job' and it is part of who I am. The passion I have for my children's well-being and their dynamic upbringing is every bit as much a part of who I am as being a sculptor was for me back in the day. Very few will "get it" and like before it doesn't matter if anyone else understands. It's just who I am.

It's so much who I am that I have let the other parts of me slide away, or languish; sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder if they've disappeared entirely. I know that this is not good for me as Philip, nor is it good for my children because we are moving out of the diapers and toddler-hood and preschool era at light speed into more complex and challenging learning curves.

I want to be - I have to be - a dynamic and interesting person, full of good humour, wit, and a zest for life. I must always be looking to learn and grow not only to be true to who I am as a person on this earth, but to be the kind of dynamic and hopefully-amazing father that I have strived to be for going on eight years and that I hope to be for the next 60.

So I am asking for your help. Pursuits, passions, hobbies, places, inspiration, events. What do you do that fires your spirit? Tell me a story. Tell me about the time you went to so and so for the first time and tried such and such. Recommend a book.

Seriously, I need a book. Right now, today. A novel. A gloriously-light upbeat novel.

Help me discover new paths and new avenues. Help me rekindle the little flame I have guarded and kept going for these years, help me turn it into a bonfire, help me design the Great Lighthouse and place the fire within.

In the meantime, I will be posting a quote from a children's book and its relevance to right now.

Help me, my readers.

In the process of helping me, you may be helping a hundred strangers, you might spark an idea in someone's heart that needs it desperately. Or maybe it will remind you that you need to fan the flames of your own passions.

Decisions

I'd like to take coat rack creature outside to photograph now that the sun has returned. However . . . he has quickly turned into a very valuable tool in the sloth household. He is covered in coats. His shoe baskets are full of shoes. Scarves are draped over his shoulders, mittens rest on his fingers. He is being used exactly as I envisioned.

So do I take all the coats and wintry paraphernalia off the steel sentinel so that I may haul him outside and document his existence? Then haul him back inside and carefully rehang all the clothes back upon his silvery torso? Or do I wait for the school bus to come home and enlist help, risking clouds and the sun dipping behind the pine trees?

Or do I just take another bite of tasty donut and enjoy Isabel perched on my lap as I sit at my desk? Decisions, decisions . . .

Note to dads with kids: if you want to ensure having at least one donut left after the kids have breakfast, you must buy the Entenmann's Variety Pack. The kids go straight for the chocolate dipped and glazed and sugar-coated donuts and leave the plain cake alone like it's radioactive waste. Then you can stroll out, pour yourself a cup of coffee and munch on a donut without fear of finding an empty box (and a kitchen full of kids with big eyes and pursed lips).

South Main Square Project

A Call for Entries was sent out to over 3,000 artists last Spring asking for proposals to be submitted for an outdoor public display of art in Davidson, North Carolina. The circulation of the call included the Program director for the McColl Center for the Visual Arts, the Gallery Director of Davidson College, the Curator of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and the Public Arts Director of the NC Arts and Science Council.

I submitted a proposal and was notified in June that my design was under consideration by the selection committee. When I returned from the Bahamas I met with the Project's Art Consultant and gave her a tour of my house, my studio, and the projects I had completed over the last eight years. She was particularly fond of the mural in Kelly's room and the Jedi Star Fighter of all things. We discussed the specifics of my designs and I gave her my full sketch book with all the variations of the drawings I had completed.

In July I received a call informing me that I had been awarded the project.

I met with the Property Owner and her Art Consultant several times over the next two months and to make a long story short, they liked my proposal to build an angel overlooking the highway so much that the project has since grown in scale and complexity. The location of the sculpture has actually been moved to a more prominent position on her property.

The contracts were signed a month ago, and I have begun work on the South Main Square Project. I have a delivery date of March, 2008.

The timing of this project is not perfect, as I had not thought I would be able to resume work as a full-time artist until Isabel started Kindergarten in September of 2009. I also had hoped I would be back to my normal good health by now. However, I am ready to embrace this challenge.

It is a very big deal for me. This is the largest piece of sculpture I have ever been commissioned to create. It is particularly significant as my Grandmother loved Davidson and retired there. She was one of my greatest supporters and provided encouragement to me as I worked my way through college and chose to pursue my art after graduation. I will be thinking of her every day.

My acceptance of this contract, in essence accepting another full-time job on top of my parenting responsibilities, means that my work here as a writer will change. I do not know exactly what is in store for the Blue Sloth. It's possible that this site will transition into the visual diary of a working artist. Perhaps that will be a compelling reason to visit.

Whatever happens as I move forward as a father and an artist, I remain grateful to you my readers for your support, for your comments, for the occasional kick in the pants, and for all the great fellowship over the last four years. Were it not for this blog, I would never have had the pleasure of your friendship.