Chat Tacheté

 Sculpture by Ellen Woodbury

13 x 7 ½ x 7 ½ inches

Black Campan Marble on Granite

Completed June, 2012

This sculpture was inspired by my tuxedo cat, Moonface.  She had several health challenges this year and was uncommonly brave and trusting throughout the long ordeal.  The title is French for Speckled Cat, and though Moonface is neither  speckled nor French, the lively stone fits her playful personality.  The marble is French.

I carved Campan Verde, the green and white cousin of Black Campan, last summer when I made The Last Dinosaur (leatherback sea turtle).  Both of these marbles come from the same quarry in France and have the same graphic pattern but very different colors.  This is a pretty wild concept if you think abut it.  What geologic factors caused both kinds of marble to be speckled in the same way, but with different colored spots and binders?

I found Black Campan much trickier to carve than Verde.  Think of it as a block made of mortar and bricks where the black matrix is the mortar and the pink and white spots are the bricks.  When cut, it fragments in any direction and the shards are very sharp, like broken glass.  Edges are quite susceptible to chipping and have to be handled with great care.  That said, the color is worth the effort.  The detail does not emerge until sanding is well under way—around 220 grit you begin to see variations in the pink and white spots.  By 2,000 grit there are hints of green and yellow, with reddish veins running through the colored spots. 

My next sculpture is a barn owl carved from a dark yellow marble from Portugal, a new stone for me.  I am filing and sanding the piece right now, and I do think it will turn out well!  I love this stage of the process where all the questions are answered and the beauty in the stone is revealed.  I'll have it ready for you in a couple of weeks!


All images and text Copyright 2012 by Ellen Woodbury
Photo by Mel Schockner

She Who Stands and Waits

Sculpture by 

Ellen Woodbury

Sivec Marble on Marble 11 x 5 x 5 inches

Completed May, 2012

The title of this sculpture is a derivation of the last line in the poem, “On His Blindness,” by John Milton—“They also serve who only stand and wait.”  Milton was contemplating his feelings of usefulness after going blind.  I take the line in the context of the poem to mean that each being has his/her own validity in life simply through the fact of existence.  We all have the right to be here. 

True patience is not one of my natural abilities.  Many of my friends see what I do as an animator and as a stone sculptor as requiring massive amounts of patience.  It is not patience that allows me to create intricate work at a snail’s pace.  All that creation-time is spent enjoying the process, envisioning the final artwork, and daydreaming about the next sculpture I will make.  

I do stand and wait for validation.  Each year I apply to several national art shows and I wait (sort of) patiently for the jury results.  This year my wait was rewarded when White Lightning (see ermine below) was accepted into the Society of Animal Artists’ 52^nd Annual Exhibition on Art and the Animal.  My first time in this prestigious venue, and I am absolutely delighted!  The show is at the Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum in Oradell, New Jersey, and will run from September 1 through December 31, 2012. 

In other news, my outdoor sculpture, “See Through Other Eyes:  Spotted Owl,” was recently installed in Highlands Ranch, CO, for June 2012-2013.  The owl is beautifully displayed in front of the Highlands Ranch Library, which is part of a gorgeous municipal park with gardens and recreational fountains (in which one can cavort if one so chooses.)

White Lightning
sculpture by Ellen Woodbury

See Through Other Eyes:  Spotted Owl
sculpture by Ellen Woodbury

See Through Other Eyes:  Spotted Owl
in front of the Highlands Ranch Public Library
Highlands Ranch, CO

All images and text Copyright 2012 by Ellen Woodbury
She Who Stands and Waits, White Lightning photos by Mel Schockner
See Through Other Eyes:Spotted Owl photos by Ellen Woodbury