Summer camp is almost over

For the past two months I've been in Summer Camp Mode -- straying freely when the spirit called from my to-do lists and curriculum and goal-setting.   My mother, like all the best ones, carefully saved all my school reports and one of them I remember her showing me years later said, "She gets along well with other children, and she is also happy playing independently, especially with crayons and clay."  

Hey! - that's the spirit of Summer Camp which led to my buying some modelling clay in a package that gave me about three handfuls, in a quality just a step up from the kids' brightly coloured variety.  Two weeks ago, I had the idea I might make a small model of "The Dreamer" -- the very romanticized statue of Christopher Columbus in "Il Giardino," a beautiful sculpture garden created by Vancouver's Italian community.

I started at Cristoforo's waist and worked downward to establish a base.  Messy fingers and all, the first half-hour was exciting.  I thought I might need to prop up his swinging leg but otherwise things went well.  But then...when I added the weight of the torso and the head -- oh, dear.... he looked like a shocking example from an orthopedic textbook.

Too bad, Colombo.  Maybe you'll make it to the New World next time.  I rolled him into a ball and decided to work flat -- a relief sculpture of, um, maybe one of the other personae at Il Giardino.

Even though this plastic clay requires working with wet hands, it still air-dries fairly quickly.  Now I had almost a handful of clay that wouldn't last much longer.  So what else could I do?  How about making my own almost-life-sized "manicule" or "index." 

Okay.  I left these two productions to dry and planned a comeback a few days later -- about the length of time I thought I could leave the remainder of the clay in its resealed package.

On Day 2 in the Summer Camp Sculpture Studio, I thought I'd work free-form on the kind of head you might see in the Uffizi Gallery  -- maybe a Dionysus with wild hair.  And this time, I made a sort of armature which is what the big kids use -- an internal support for the weight of the clay, something like a skeleton...except mine was a super-simple assemblage of newspaper and masking tape.

So I was off to a fresh start,  with plastic sheeting (and stones to hold it down as a breeze blew pleasantly through my campsite), carton of water, my fist-sized armature, and half of the opened package of clay. 

Everything I needed except...........enough clay.  Once I covered the armature, I barely had enough left for the face's nose, let alone its ears.  So this is what I was left with:--

I felt slightly cheered when I read an article about the recent discovery of a head of Alexander the Great -- long-lost in the store room of a Greek museum.  (Maybe I should tuck mine away in a corner, and some day it might be considered an archaeological find)

But seriously, wasn't the best option to cover this bald ear-less head with a cap?  The internet abounds with instructions for sewing, knitting, gluing, folding, felting a simple 3-pointed jester's cap.  And I was certainly feeling the fool at this point -- but not foolish enough to spend another two hours making a head covering.

Instead, I gathered some of the Chinese lanterns my neighbour gave me along with some small dried flowers from my garden for an extravagant garland.  Let's imagine this as "Gaia,"  -- perhaps as seen in the Uffizi Gallery!

Within a few days of finishing Gaia, I was walking along Stanley Park's sea wall and found that Mother Nature had carved a perfect stone face, apparently without effort.  And if you wonder how this caught my eye, check out this week's BBC video on "Why We See Faces in Clouds."