Monthly Archives: January 2025

Milk and Apples

Meet “Milk and Apples”. They are the latest anthropomorphic sculpture to emerge from my work table.

I must admit, they took some time. Not with regard to the actual sculpting time, but more in a manner of conception. I think I experienced something similar to a writer’s block, but not in the area of coming up with ideas, but more the desire to create? Events of the past week or so, don’t exactly inspire light joy-filled work. During this time, I also took a bit of a social media break. The owners of some of the platforms I use decided to dispense with fact checking and decency. So, I decided I didn’t want to consume their products. I’m not sure if I want to go back. In fact, if you want to follow me on social media (minus the ads, bots, and crazies) I did start a BlueSky account. You can check out things I post there at:

@lwartskisculpture.bsky.social

I also add all my sculptures to my Lynn Wartski Art Dolls Pinterest board:

This little social media break also made me reconsider what I do here. I will be honest with you. Maintaining my website as a blog is really just another chore I’ve assigned myself that really doesn’t do much. I have more interaction with the spam bots that manage to evade the filters every time I post or update, than I do with actual readers. I’m still considering options. I will update you if/when I make any decisions on that front.

Back to Milk and Apples

These two rather contented looking porcine characters were inspired by a quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.” For those not familiar, this is an explaination offered to the other farm animals as to why only the pigs would be enjoying those particular goods. This seemed timely to me. So, I felted my dismay into a light hearted wool wrapping. I don’t know if this has made me feel any better, but it did inspire some charming art.

The pigs are needle felted wool over a wire and quilt batting armature. They each have hand sewn iridescent glass bead eyes. Individual elements (pigs, bowl of apples, milk can) are stitched and felted through the top two layers of the base. The base is made of three layers of heavy wool felt: green, brown, and grey (not shown).

I am not sure if Milk and Apples will show up at HGA right away. I may hang on to them for my feature show. That show opens the last week of July.

Bubbly Whale

I decided to create a second piece for next month’s “It’s all About The Story” show. When scrolling through our guest poet, Jeffery Beam’s work, a second short poem caught my attention. It is simply titled The Whale.

I love creating sculptures of these mammoth marine mammals. I’m not sure what the pull on my imagination is. Perhaps it is the juxtaposition of something that is both hulking and graceful? Or, maybe it is how they are entwined into so many stories and mythologies? What ever the reason, I have returned to the whale several times. Ironically, one time I steered away from whales was for a Herman Melville inspired show. I figured there would be enough cetaceans in attendance there.

needle felted hanging whale sculpture with glass embellishments for Story show — Bubbling Leviathan

Not A White Whale

My whale piece is titled, “Bubbling Leviathan”. Like whale themselves, I find the word leviathan intriguing. Somehow, it strikes me as one of those words that sounds like what it is, large and hulking. Unfortunately, it is also usually equated as dark, sinister, or even evil. I didn’t want my leviathan to be evil, so I encorporated something light and bubbly. Literally bubbles, or more specifially the feeding technique of creating bubble nets that humpback whales use. Humpbacks blow bubbles from their blowhole while turning in a circle as the swim upward. This concentrates the small krill that they feed on within the bubbly enclosure as the whale swims upward with its mouth open.

My Leviathan is embellished with swirling gold patterns, glass elements, and metalic embroidery. I was striving to meld the natural and mythological I find combined in these creatures. Glass beads are suspended above and trail off the whale creating the illusion of movement and spinning of the bubble net. The sculpture is suspended from a thin bamboo ring. A spiral connector, and metalic ring complete the hanging connection.

Bubbling Leviathan will be at The Hillsborough Gallery of Arts starting February 10th.

Not A Whale

wet and needle felted vessel featuring yarn wrap — Vessel #12

I took some time this week to do a little wet felting. I tried the technique where you wrap a resist object, a balloon in this case, with some yarn first. Then I layered white and black wool. After wet felting, and popping the balloon, the resulting form was turned inside out to reveal that the yarn was incorporated into the felt as well. I worked the top edge a bit with my needles to create a finished edge. I had originally planned for this wet felt to become a bag, but I worked it into such a nice spherical shape, that it screamed to be left alone. My most trusted art critics agreed with this creative choice. So, Vessel # 12 it is. This piece will show up at HGA as soon as I get a chance to add it to inventory and drop it off.

Valentines?

I have a small selection of my hand pulled gel mono-print cards in floral and heart designs available at the gallery. Sketching a few other ideas. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else.

Past, Present, and Future

Past and Present

I will get to the future soon enough. I missed sharing with you a couple of ornaments that went to the gallery during the the last few days before Christmas. Below are Puffin Present and Sloth Lights.

As you can see, I didn’t take images of them before I dropped them off. One of the other HGA artists helped me out, and took a couple of shots with her phone before they found new homes.

I’d also like you to meet Turk. He is an African Penguin. I made this little sculpture for the desk of a very special museum professional who works with African Pengins on a regular basis. I didn’t share him, as he was a surprise for Christmas morning. He was a present himself.

Looking to the Future

Lastly two pieces for the near, and somewhat more distant future. The first, is one of two works I have planned for our gallery’s yearly “It’s All About The Story” show. That show features artwork that responds to written work by one of the area’s many authors. This year we are working with the poet Jeffery Beam. The “Story” show will run from February 11th through March 23rd. There will be a reading hosted by the gallery on February 23rd, and a reception during the February Last Friday Art Walk on February 28th.

The first work I’ve created for the February show I’m titling “Dryad Slumber.” I will share the poem she is in response to later. For now, I thought that I’d just share her as her own visual art self. She is the first “human” figure that I’ve created in a while.

I will tell more about this piece as we get closer to that show’s installation.

In the very near future, The Hillsborough Gallery will be hosting “Moving Heaven and Earth”. This is an invitational show of non-HGA artists who’s work we enjoy. I was in the gallery today and saw some of the work that is included. It is a fabulous show, and well worth checking out. It will be installed tomorrow, January 6th, and will run through February 9th. Here is a list of the guest artist included:
Jane Filer, Sarah Graham, Katie Hayes, Ian Herdell, Alexis Joyner, Ley Killeya, Oami Powers, Suzan Scribner-Reed, Darcy Szeremi, Nadine Zenobi

For a bit farther into the future

I ended up creating the first ornament for the 2025 holiday season, though not on purpose. The initial snail that I made for “Dryad Slumber” was entirely too big. So I plucked him off, and made the smaller version you see in the Dryad Slumber images. The larger snail received a Santa’s hat and a hanging loop. He will deliver presents next winter at a slightly slower pace. I’m not sure that I will share all of the ornaments next year, it got a bit exhausting this time around.

That’s all for now.

Lynn Wartski Sculpture

Art dolls and mixed media sculpture