— PROJECT NAME
Name
— ROLE
Role
— DATE
Date
Reflections About My Sculptures
In about one week and I think it was in 2020 during the scourge of Covid, I just said to myself “Enough.” Enough of making increasingly unsalable work because it was becoming more and more what I needed to do which was always a big thing to me anyway once I left making pots behind. And creating a new patronage after we moved out to Oregon and witnessing almost every artist try to sell their work for peanuts was not encouraging.
But the big reason I skidded to a halt was because I wanted to take care of my increasingly hurting old body. Arthritis stiffened my wrists and ached in my back. While I was trying to sand a basketball sized globe out of hard insulating foam on my biggest drum sander, it flipped off and struck me in the nose. Blood poured out of that orifice. Luckily it wasn’t a piece of wood. Leaning over my work for hours was not helping. So I stopped and that left a black hole in my creativity. “Oh, I thought, I’ll just go ‘have fun’ like everyone else. I’m finally scrambling out of the hole and one thing I like to do is reflect upon my life as a sculptor. So in this section of my web site, I’m giving it a go. Maybe you’ll find a piece you bought from me and now the circle is completed.
Lois Meets Her Twin
— PROJECT NAME
Lois Meets Her Twin
— ROLE
Maker
— DATE
circa 2015
I am sitting on a rather uncomfortable chair with no padding across from Lois in her 12th floor apartment at Holladay Park Plaza, a retirement community in downtown Portland, Oregon. If I turn my head to face east, I see Mt. Hood’s snowbound splendor, well if it still has snow at the end of the summer and if there are few clouds. It’s splendorous to be up so high that I can see the forested base and how it extends down into the Willamette Valley. While the chair is uncomfortable, her words warm me. I am so glad that I contacted her a few years after she left my father. I wanted to understand better his confused life which has certainly
confused mine. Actually today her words are flabbergasting and have nothing to do with my father.
Lois reports, “Did you know that I have a twin attached to my lower spine? It was discovered from some x-rays I had done. I actually had a twin developing with me, but it did not progress in its development.
"I’m just amazed that my twin is still with me after sixty years or so. I’m not too sure why I’m bringing this up now, but I just need to talk about it. You know I was shuttled between orphanages when my mother couldn’t take care of me. I have no close family and I am grieving this twin I had. This twin that is a small mass in my body at this very moment. I do consider you family. Your father and I did not work out, but you and I are bonding more and more. I so appreciate your coming up here today to visit.”
Responding back with a smile I utter, "Well, we are family now. You know that after all this time. But I didn’t even know this could happen, that your twin could get absorbed by you when you were still in your mother’s womb.”
“It’s not just me that it has happened to. It’s actually quite common with an estimation that 38 percent of twins get reabsorbed by the other twin, so only one baby is born alive. I’ve only started learning about Vanishing Twin Syndrome.”
I leave Lois that afternoon and ponder this remarkable occurrence on the long drive home. Of course being the kind of artist that I am, already I am developing a few images in my mind. Three-dimensional images. My efforts in my studio have been pushing the envelope of what one would call pretty or decorative. Just take a look at "Work" on this site especially sections on Morphos and Mummies.
I learn all about Vanishing Twin Syndrome, which before sonograms and ultrasound was usually never discovered. The non viable twin usually gets reabsorbed like when there are chromosomal abnormalities or placental issues. But with parasitic twins some weird things can happen. With Rachipagus, the parasitic twin is attached to the spine, sometimes with extra limbs or other body parts. I think this what happened to Lois; she has a parasitic twin. With Dicephaic Parapagus and Craniopagus Parasiticusetus there is a single torso but two heads. Yipes. We’ve seen those pictures. With Epigastric Parasite limbs from the parasitic twin can stick out from the surviving twin at the upper part of the abdomen.
On and on go unfamiliar scientific words that describe just where the parasitic twin is attached. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about conjoined twins where both fetuses are fully developed. I’m not liking this word “parasitic.” These were going to be babies
who just lost out in this vast lottery called life and death. These parasites just didn’t want to let go. But nowadays an extra head or limb is surgically removed to allow the “healthier” dominant twin to survive. I get it. But I’m mourning too now along with Lois.
I want Lois to be able to hold her twin in her arms, talk to it, explain to him or her that she has mourned their lost connection, especially when she was so isolated in orphanages.
About a year before Lois talked to me, I wanted to cover some of what I like to call Morphos with wax to imitate human skin. Paint or add red and blue thread underneath and I have a convincing skin complete with veins and arteries. I feel a need to present to Lois a representation of her lost twin. Slowly it emerges into a vestigial twin meeting the other. Who is who? They both are equally important and needed. I have a doll that opens and shuts her eyes. They stare out at nothing at this point. I take the face and enclose it in a kind of fetal position and yes I use paint and wax. In her clay hands she holds her vestigial twin, looking upon it with open eyes, open as long as she needs to gaze.
Exploring with My Sister
I found a wonderfully patinaed sausage maker which got my very developed mind for all things found objects to create this space exploration craft. You can see it’s fully loaded with all sorts of small objects I had lying around that now loom big. The jeweled American flag sets it all of as does the compass on a pull chain. I had all this stuff and probably knew the end was near, I mean for my making sculpture so I went all out.
By why things on wheels or travel? When I lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, I never needed to travel. Everything I needed was there, mountains, forests, building materials, my house, my life. Moving to Oregon changed all that. I am no longer in the middle of earth, I am on the outskirts. The winters here are dreary. So I got various RVs and travel in the winter.
When I was making the explorers holding onto their tomato paste cans (just the right size and I had them in our pantry already) I realized I was making my sister Nina and me as first mate and captain although who can tell as we lumber along who is guiding what. All I know is that we are excited.