Amiryha: Spirit Mask Wall Art

     
     This is the second Spirit Mask work. I've called this one Amiryha and she is a sister to Zharyha. The story is the same. After much consideration, I decided to leave the tails off this one ... I don't find they add much to the work and only serve to lengthen the piece for display purposes. I think she is busy enough without more embellishment. This one has blue sand dollars, dyed in my kitchen sink with vegetable dye. They are very interesting to make once the main mask is shaped. That is where all the work comes into play as it's done over a form I fashioned out of large styrofoam balls. I have some new felting pads coming soon, so I'll make a new form from my two old pads and I think that will make my life easier for the third mask. How many of these I make will depend on sand dollar supply, which is getting dangerously low. Time to hit the beach again. I'll also be searching for small crab shells .. the smaller the better. I'd like to use them on one of these masks as well. 


I'm keeping pretty busy with my art these days, but I must admit, I'm getting a bit shack whacky, so I think it's time for a mini vacation. I'm looking at sometime in May for a trip to the South Shore, where I'll spend one night with a dear old friend who lives in an inspiring place beside the ocean, and one night with my cousin Deb, artist and owner of The Wardroom Gallery. Really looking forward to that. 
Last weekend one of my higher ranking relatives spent the weekend with me here. We got out for a nice dinner and had some leisure time to catch up. This coming weekend I have a social event to attend on Saturday night in Halifax at the Lord Nelson Hotel. I'm not sure what time I'll be returning here, or if I'm spending the night in the city, so have made arrangements for a dog sitter. 


Having done all that spring cleaning awhile back, I managed to find a place for everything in my studio, and promptly forgot where some of those places were. Some of my tools are now a bit hard to find and I was disgusted to realize I'd put my felting needles away and couldn't find them anywhere. Frustration set in! I ordered more and they should be here soon, and of course, found the old ones in the meantime in a little drawer labelled "needles". Duh! Anyway ... it's a good thing as I ordered smaller needles this time. I've stopped breaking them so I should be good to go with the smaller gauge.  That's a lot of felting needles, but I've fashioned tools to hold multiple needles (my favorite tool takes four) so I'll use many of them that way. Needle felting has become slightly more popular down this way, so perhaps I can also sell some of them in smaller quantities, but in any case, you can't really have too many needles. I'll likely have to go through a learning curve with the smaller ones too, so some will get broken at first. I have a ring to finish this afternoon for a customer but that's all the creating I plan to do today. It's dreary, chilly and looks like rain so I'm going to treat myself to a "no" day. Just relax and watch the tube, read or nap. I deserve it. 

Zharyha and Easter Sunday

     A couple more small details have been given to the Spirit Mask. She has tails on either side of her head now, with some crystal and small glass beads added, the idea being that the wall where it will eventually live is lit in the evenings often only by the warm glow of the fireplace. I was hoping to catch some of that light in the crystals and have it reflect and glitter occasionally. I've been making more sketches, so she will have family. I've started working on a second one already. She now has a name and a story to go along with her. 

     Zharyha       She and her sisters are spirits who live and play in that mystical place where surf and sand or rock collide. They dance in the sea foam, playing on the crests of the crashing waves. They watch over this home of theirs and make sure the ocean and shoreline are always in harmony when they meet, as the friction erodes the rock away to form substrate for the beginnings of new life. These spirits are more visible now, in our lifetime. This is due to the increased density of the sea foam, from pollutants and chemical changes in the water. This makes the spirits' job much more difficult, and they often weep with the howling gales over the slow, but inevitable loss of their environment. Please help them survive and respect the symbiotic relationships of nature. 

     So, besides that, yesterday was a fun day. Being Easter Sunday, most folks have family commitments, but there's still a bunch of us old single birds out there, so we got together at the home of a couple of old friends and had a big feed. We started with appetizers of crackers with black pepper goat cheese, burn yer lips off guacamole, and smoked Genoa sausage. Then we moved on to the main meal which was a big ham dinner with several choices of vegetables, hot cross buns, home made pickles and beets, three kinds of mustard, oh my! Everything was so good and it looked like everyone had a pretty good appetite. Dessert was fresh made lemon cake and pumpkin pie. This is where I gave up ... I had no room left for dessert. None ... nada ... not the barest crack or crevice.

      I had brought Daisy along with me to play with their husky. Both the dogs were tied outside all afternoon and played each other out. They both enjoyed a portion of leftovers from our dinner. I took her home in early evening. She was played out and getting cranky and I had overeaten so just wanted to have a nap. That is exactly what we did as soon as I got home. I had lots of sleep and felt rather chipper today. Managed to get several hours worth of mundane chores accomplished and actually enjoyed doing it. I'm going to cook a nice pork tenderloin supper with fresh broccoli ... healthy and lean, watch a little tv, do a little felting and go to bed early in hopes I feel this good again tomorrow. 

Wool and Sand Dollars

This is the completed mask which will be a gift for a dear friend, to add to her collection. As I worked with this, and the face evolved, a female persona developed. I believe she is a guardian of marine shorelines; places where salty surf collides with rock and sand, eroding and providing new substrate for new life. I also think she is the first of a series of these masks. 


I learned a lot about the wool with this project, as it was full of challenges. No wet felting techniques were used so it had to be needle felted to a very stiff stage, in order for it to hold it's form. I fashioned a mold to work on, using styrofoam and masking tape, which I wrapped in plastic food wrap in order to keep the bits of styrofoam from getting into the wool. When it was stiff enough, I sewed a wire frame to the inside, which I made by using the same mold. The end result is worth the frustration. I'm very pleased with it and I'm anxious to begin another very soon. The amount of felting required has created a sore shoulder, so I'm going to catch up on some other things for a day or two. I'm also fighting a stubborn cold. Being Easter weekend, I have no other plans so will rest as much as I can and try to get well.