CREATIVITY IN MOTION

Our last meeting was our second hands-on sculpturing night. Thanks to Jerry for being our clay supplier -- although he needed to leave the meeting before the sculpting actually began.

Allison started off with a snowman type figure and worked her piece into a cool little lamb. By using a coffee stir-stick, she was able to pluck at the clay to cause a rippled, raised surface -- almost like a meringue.

Jacci's heart-shaped incense burner has a square in the center to add another effect -- possibly a picture or other material -- later to be shellacked or varnished to give the whole piece a shiny finish.

Amy's crucifix was rustic with an antique feel. The deep gray color of the clay added to the ancient look of the cross and gave it an illusion of being made of metal.

Alex's cat is extremely detailed. By individually sculpting each piece before attaching them to the body, he was able to create many different layers and textures. After all the parts were in place, he detailed the entire piece with a similar style that Allison used by plucking and cutting into the clay -- in this case giving the cat a "fur" texture.

Donnie & Stacey took their sculptures with them before we were able to get any pix, but Stacey's piece was a long strip of clay with a duplicating pattern -- that when she looped it into a ring could be used as a napkin holder or a type of bottomless, decorative pot.

Donnie spent his time sculpting out a man's torso (with a sweet "six-pack" I might add). Donnie's got a terrific talent for muscular detail -- as he's shown in a lot of his comic drawings -- see previous posts with his penciling work.

Awesome Work Artists!

THE LIBRARIAN / SKATER

Alex joined our Creative Arts Group for the first time last week. He's a librarian by day and creative Comic Strip writer on the side. His work is published in several local newspapers like "Go Detroit" and "The Blader". Alex has been writing Comic Strips for about 12 years and enjoys expressing himself to the community thru his edgy, sometimes political, sometimes satirical viewpoint.

After creating the original Comic Strip on letter sized paper, he copies and distributes the piece to several different publications. There are no specific contracts with a certain newspaper, so this allows Alex to distribute and be published as the editors of the papers see fit. The newspaper will then modify the size and decide where in their paper they want the Comic to run.

Alex came to the meeting that we were creating with Clay and came up with a very detailed cat as his piece. We'll be featuring all of our sculptures in the next week or so.

TONGUE DRUM

"Tongue drums are known by many different names including Log Drums, Ozi Boxes, Teponaztli, or Xylodrums. Early tongue drums also had a wide variety of functions within different cultures from story telling to beating out war cries over long distances.Tongue drums are direct descendants of these ancient instruments, with a modern twist, harmonics and tuning. These amazing drums are gaining in musical popularity and finding their rightful place in recordings by artists from around the world."

Phil brought his Tongue Drum to the meeting before this last one. Like the description above mentions, this cool instrument gives a great accent to other music -- in our case, music provided by Chris & Phil on their D'Jembes -- while Allison experimented with the unusual sounds this tongue drum is capable of.

Jewelry

Jacci has been creating with beads for many years. She brought a beautiful assortment of her work to our Creativea Artrs Group on Friday. Jacci works with different varieties of beads, stones, fine metals, glass and gems to string together fabulous pieces of jewelry. She also showed off her talent with some unusual beaded baubles that can hang as decorations.

Jacci would love to display her jewelry in hopes of selling it, but hasn't found the right means of presenting her work yet. Not being fond of the "arts & crafts show" idea, she's leaning toward a possible consignment with an established store. If you have any suggestions -- please send along an email!

Jacci has experimented with several other areas of the arts besides beading..... pottery, ceramics and painting. We look forward to seeing some of her other talents at future meetings.