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While working on my quilt of ice age horse drawings, I discovered the marvelous ‘Kone’ of Miroslav Jaros on Pinterest.  These carved and decorated horses reminded me of the simple horse carvings that my Slovenian grandfather made for me and my sister in the 1950’s.  We loved playing with the wooden toys, wich needed all of our imagination to supply the details and the stories.

I feel very comfortable exploring some of the forms that Jaros uses.  We have the same eastern European heritage, so any appropriation is personal, and not cultural.  I have never seen his work in the round, or even learned the scale of it, and I never copy directly from his forms.  There are many examples of Swedish folk art horses, as well, although they lack the more sculptural and monumental weight of the Kone.   With my grandfather standing behind me, I have a great sense of joy exploring this form.

The horse figures in the photo have been roughed out on the bandsaw from 1.5″ thick stock.  They are about 5″ tall.  I used carving tools and abrasives to refine the forms after taking the photo.  These are marvelous surfaces for ornament!  There are an infinite ways to divide the surfaces for pyrography, paints, patination, and applied decorative elements, like upholstery nails.  Although the shaping is somewhat tedious (more than woodturning; more like quilting!), the surface decoration makes it all worthwhile.

When we came home from the Legends Rock paintings near Thermopolis, Wyoming, I was inspired to make my own version of the ‘quilt lady.’  The rock painting is larger than lifesize, but this one is a block print about 5 x 7,” printed on rust-dyed fabric that is not quite as red as the Wyoming rocks.

I have made a variety of goddess figures, too.  Most of these are inspired by the drawings in Civilization of the Goddess:  the World of Old Europe, by Marija Gimbutas.   I’ve drawn the bird goddess on clay and wood.  Recently, I made some simple white line woodcuts.

Here she is, with pearls.

The bird goddess works well for woodburning, too.  Here she is on a maple burl vessel, with red oxide highlights.

Some of the other goddess from Gimbutas need a 3D presentation.  I was lucky to get some red micaceous clay from Jennifer Hanson at Spinning Star studios for these three charming goddess figurines.  There is a relatively clear consensus now that the earliest use of clay by humans was for figurative work.

In 2003, I made a quilt, 13000 B.C., after spending several weeks learning to draw the animals in cave paintings in Dordogne and Altamira from that time.  The cave artists worked in the dark, using simple pigments, and drawing quickly.  They often drew over older drawings, and calcium deposits have covered some of the work over the past 10000 years.   I felt that it was OK to use their style, since so many different artists had already contributed to the cave paintings.

Since that first quilt, I have used the drawings on freeform stoneware plates, and more recently, on highly figured maple burls.  Something about the complex surface of the burl invites simple lines.   Where the figures have shading, it was done with oil paints, which blend beautifully on wood.

A group of these turnings and plates will be at the Boulder Street Gallery in January 2019.

The bowl with the ice age rhino is birch, about 8″ in diameter.

Rhinos Now 8"x8" silk painting

The intense heat this summer has inspired me to go inside and work on cave paintings.   I kept the original drawings that I made for a cave painting quilt,   ‘13,000 B.C.’     That quilt was included in the 2005 Quilts and Fine Woodworking Show at the Colorado Springs Pioneers’ Museum that year.   I will have a series of small silk paintings and quilts with some of those reworked drawings for the Studio Tour in September.

Similar images are also finding their way onto bowls made of maple burl.   They are not as frosty as the silk paintings, but the prehistoric images are very strong in any medium.

Go to the Studio Tour tab (above)  for a link to the Tour artists, dates, and maps to the studios.