Boy, I'm just not very good at being consistent with my newsletters, but that leaves me lots of news to share! I hope you are all having a nice summer.

Ours was going along just fine, but as it's been very dry and hot, we were overdue for a major fire.

Unfortunately, it started the last day of July in the drainage right behind my home, human caused, of course. I had hiked that very mountain that morning, and by 2 pm, the fire was moving so fast down the mountain that the fire trucks all fled. We were ordered to evacuate, and I had 30 minutes to pack. I could hear the roar of the flames as they came closer; it was pretty scary. Grabbed a few paintings, the dog and some clothes and got out.

You can see in these photos how hot it burned...that white dot in the bottom photo shows about where my home is. The fire burned within 300 yards, but they put a fire line in and saved our neighborhood. Folks up the road were not as lucky; they lost 16 homes.

 

I returned after a week and resumed life; no damage, and I'm so grateful to those 500 firefighters we had. The fire is still burning, but is not threatening us here.

 

On to better things! I'm excited to show you the results of the cougar bronze I did for my folks; here it is at the foundry getting prepared, and then it was installed in their front driveway circle. She looks great! We had a wonderful unveiling party, everyone came, and it was loads of fun.

 

I also completed a few other new bronzes, adding to my inventory of fun species. The sable antelope is very regal, and I hope will prove to be popular among my collectors. The little zebra duiker is not well known, but that makes it more enjoyable for me, to create sculptures of little known critters that deserve some attention. Then, a snow leopard attacking an ibex; this was a bit of an engineering challenge for me, but I think it works.

 

 

My latest exploit is also in the field of sculpting, a technique I call "Emergence". I came up with this idea one day, combining wire, foam, plaster, paper mache, cardboard, etc, etc to create a 3-D relief sculpture of some of my favorite animals. And then, how fun, I get to paint it too! A combination of my two favorite things. As far as I know, no one else is doing this, so I'm hoping it will be a hit at the Safari Club show. Some of these are fairly large, but I'm learning a lot as I go along, so it may get easier as time goes on.

 

Hope you like the new pieces! And thanks to everyone who wrote and sent prayers and good thoughts during the fire! I can kind of relax now, as all of the fuel behind my home is gone, but it still looks "normal" from my studio.

 

All the best to you!