A Kiss to the Wind

"A Kiss to the Wind" Marble sculpture by Ellen Woodbury
Yule Marble (Colorado)
25 x 13 x 8 inches
completed October, 2007



This is my newest sculpture, completed about a month ago, and recently sold (hooray!). It was inspired by my little mare, Kentucky, now in retirement at a Quarter horse breeding ranch in Bishop, CA, where she is the alpha mare in her retirees pasture. I can't visit her often, so I keep in touch with her by tossing a kiss to the wind--I'm sure my kiss finds it's way over the Rockies and Sierras to her pasture.

The sculpture was begun at the Marble/marble symposium in early July, 2007, a 9-day marble-carving workshop held high in the Rockies in Marble, CO. The stone is quarried at the Yule marble quarry, about 10 miles outside of the tiny town, even higher in the mountains. The experience of sculpting at the symposium is exhilarating! Upwards of 60 stone sculptors meet in wooded acreage along the Crystal River and carve beautiful native marble into stunning forms in the rain (sometimes) using power tools. We eat our meals on an enormous slab of Yule Marble fashioned into a giant dining table and sit on chair-level blocks of marble. Sculptors range in experience from complete beginners to seasoned professionals. Classes are held every morning on all aspects of stone sculpture and there are fabulous instructors to answer any questions you can think up. The experience is life-changing and mind-blowing.

"A Kiss to the Wind" is the result of my second symposium experience. I attended the same workshop in 2006 and began "Spiral Bunny," my first large marble piece, which was finished in January, 2007. I am hooked. Stone is a brilliant, brutal, prehistoric medium which yields to the hand and the imagination when approached with respect and a gentle touch. Diamond blades and grinders also help alot, but these tools are used with care.

I am currently working on a sculpture with a magic theme as a commission for a collector in Maryland. In keeping with my love of animals, the subject is a dragon. The stone is red travertine, a metamorphic rock (formed through millions of years of heat and pressure) with fantastic stripes of red, yellow and orange. Travertine is harder than limestone but has porosities similar to limestone, which will give a magical texture to the dragon's skin. Travertine is nearly as hard as marble so the stone is strong and can hold an edge very well. I am very excited about the piece, and will share a view of it with you when it is finished.



copyright 2008 Ellen Woodbury

Magic Lesson

"Magic Lesson" Sculpture by Ellen Woodbury
Red Travertine and White Alabaster
15 x 14 x 14 inches
completed February, 2008


This is my latest creation and my first commission. My clients requested a sculpture with a magic theme and a removable piece. After some thought and research into magic tricks and objects I suggested a magic animal, a dragon, since I enjoy sculpting animals more that anything else. They were very enthusiastic about the idea and so I proceeded to find the right stone. I chose red travertine, a stone from the Middle East which is formed in part with water running through it. The water creates porosities in the stone called vugs. The vugs come in all shapes and sizes (worm holes, honeycombs, rivulets, some even filled with calcite and crystals) and I thought the vuggie surface texture and the variety of red and orange stripes in the stone would create an awesome dragon skin.

Working with the stone was a lesson in geology and patience. My tools could very easily get snagged in the vugs and grind away more than I intended to remove. The different stripes of color in the stone were often layers of different hardness, which meant my tools would blaze through some layers and creep through others--yet another reason to carve slowly and carefully. The location of the vugs was impossible to predict since there were so many sizes and shapes of vug. There was also an enormous abundance of them, which created a certain drama for me when I approached a place where I needed a solid point, such as the points in the dragon's hood, and the end of the dragon's hands and nose. Somehow I got very lucky and every place where I needed to have stone was solid. The thought of carving into the end of the nose and discovering a huge vug there was both exciting and terrifying. Each time I reached a destination in my carving and found stone was a mini euphoria.

i enjoyed working with my clients on this sculpture because it challenged me to do a piece that I would probably not have created on my own. I chose to do the dragon, but was apprehensive that I might end up with a Disney-influenced design. I decided my dragon should be a wise and compassionate companion to humans. I approached magic as an aspect of imagination and fantasy as that is my experience in Animation. I see magic (fantasy) as an essential aspect of reality. Reality devoid of magic would be unbearable, fantasy is what makes it possible for me to deal with and exist in reality. Opposites are necessary in order to maintain an equilibrium in any system. My dragon holds a wizard's hat in his out-stretched hands--offering the gift of magic to the viewer, the ability to exist with grace in a chaotic world.

This is the most challenging sculpture I have made to date. The pose was complex and the stone was tricky to carve. However, it was not a hair-tearing experience. Everything worked out great, every person I asked for advice or help was cheerful, knowledgable, and correct in the information they gave me. My clients were brilliant. The piece required hundreds of hours of careful work to become real, and it was all really fun!

I hope this brings a bit of fantasy to your reality and makes your day a tiny bit more fun.


copyright 2008 Ellen Woodbury