Rocks mostly. I sculpted (carved) some wood, too, but it was lava-rock, soapstone and marble that I did mostly. And I was almost good at it. I really liked it. I may still do…?

I used to race motorcycles, play sports and paint in acrylics and oils, too, but I was only semi-good at sculpting and, to be fair, mediocre is the better description. Adequate, perhaps? I just liked sculpting more than anything else and passion really is the primary muse.

I could just look at a rock and see something deep within it that was obviously needing just a little help to get out. It was usually pretty obvious to me. “There is a sea lion in there!” In fact, it was just a lump of rock but, like watching clouds and daydreaming, one can see all sorts of things in blobs. And I did.

I haven’t sculpted in almost 35 years and, even then, that last piece came about fifteen years after the previous one. I have not really done much of anything in over 50 years. Claiming the ability to sculpt is now a spurious, false, weak-at-best, fantasy-at-worst falsehood. I am a sad, sculpting fraud. But I might also be an aspiring sculpting fraud. I am thinking about whacking at a few rocks again.

I say ‘fraud’ not because of false claims but primarily because I have the guilty proof of being a poseur right in front of me. I still have a half a dozen large soapstone and marble ‘blobs’ in the workshop and have had them for even longer than I have had the workshop. Seems I am clinging to my rocks (there’s a phrase, eh?). Maybe I am clinging to my past? I am definitely clinging to something……heavy and hard to move………

It is time to sculpt or get off the rock! So, yesterday, I started. A bit. I got out a blob of marble and looked at it and looked at it. You know what I saw? I saw a blob of marble. No sea lions. No nothing. When that ‘blankness’ comes, it is a good idea to just start whacking. Maybe the ‘vision’ is a little deeper in there, ya know? So, I got out the grinder and started to attack the marble. It turns out I have two pieces of marble on the same scale of hardness as diamonds. Two grinder disks later, I have an almost perfectly intact blob.

The marble may be too hard. I do not have enough cutting discs at this rate. I have a small boulder of Onyx, too. It is definitely too hard – the discs barely scratch it. It seems half my inventory (about two hundred pounds or so) is too hard to work with but I had carried them all around for a long time before just learning that. And that now presents as a bit of a challenge for me (not quite as motivating as a passionate muse but still a push of sorts). I am gonna keep whacking, fer sure, but I have also sent away for a few more stone-whacking tools. No, I am not persistent, persevering or passionate………

….stupid shows up a bit differently for me.

PS. If sculping art pieces does not come to any kind of aesthetically pleasing fruition, knowing how to split granite is a close second of achievement for me. I have a lot of protruding rocks on the site and some kind of get in the way at times. I may be able to ‘whack off’ a few sticky-out parts. That would be good. I tried doing that today, too. And it is amazing what kind of rubble one can make with a stone chisel. Uncontrolled, unskilled, pointless rubble but still, I made some beautiful rubble!

Maybe I should stick to rubble-making?