The Bird Carver

Kermodging - that is my word.  It is the effort one takes at attempting to make it through.  It is my made up word for when I am in the midst of a carving and it is difficult.  I simply “kermodge” through it.  There is a point in every piece that I do where it is difficult to see the end.  I don’t see it, feel it - nothing.  And it is difficult to get through.  But “kermodge” I do, following the Michael Angelo philosophy of sculpture - look twice and cut once.  Accept during this time I am looking 4 or 5 times.  And I can’t explain it.  Sure, they are uniquely beautiful, all of them, when they are finished, though I don’t know if I like any of them.  There is that time in every carving where it becomes difficult and I have to step back away and look at it objectively, with pictures, with notes, with a clay model, anything that can help me get through.  And then suddenly, like going through a dense fog, it is the other side, where it all makes sense.  Make sense?

Filed under: General on June 6th, 2007