Friends and family – or maybe just friends, I won’t make any assumptions on my readership – I apologize for having been away from the blog for…nearly a whole year! It’s ridiculous. I don’t have any good excuses. Are there any GOOD excuses? Act of God might count, I suppose. Death, but that would curtail my writing permanently. Not too many others.

I can safely say that my time away has been due to two things. One, being pretty busy with “real life” stuff, which doesn’t quite cover all the free time I’ve had. And two, being somewhat overwhelmed by a lot of talk/advice I’ve read around the interwebs about “growing your audience through blogging.” I’m still confused by what it all means, and the more I think about it and try to come up with what it seems I should be writing, the longer the expanse of time grows between that last blog post and this one.

I’m kind of tired of it, the not writing. I’ve actually been very hard at work with the art, and I’d like to tell you guys about it. Maybe I’ll never figure out how to write the perfect blog post that will drive seven million people to my blog, half of which will look at my site, one-sixteenth of whom will write me once with a question, and one percent of that who will either buy something from me or hire me to do a commission.

Know what? Those numbers are probably all too high. Even if there were seven million people, the following numbers, I have been told, are far, far, FAR lower, which is why you’re supposed to craft perfect blog posts. *sigh* Get it?

At any rate, how about I just let you know what’s up around the ol’ fantabulous art factory? There have been several new pieces I’ve created since June of last year. I’ve done “#30 Molar” for a dentist’s office in Indianapolis, and following that there was an amazing whirlwind of creativity and lack of sleep and sweat that resulted in “Meer-col,” both of which are viewable below.

Following the completion of “Meer-col” the holidays rolled in, and it was hard to get much done. Wait! That’s not true at all! I completely forgot about a set of still figures I did just for fun and as a change of pace. I still have a few of them left. I’ll blog about those separately, as they seem to deserve it, but suffice to say that they are little people around 3″ tall that have marbles as heads. Their bodies and attending accoutrements are of stainless steel, mostly 1/8″ rod like my rolling ball sculptures, but also some smaller wire as well as some flat sheet here and there.

Following my still figures and the end of the holidays I decided it was high time to get back to work on rolling ball sculpture. I had purchased a small batch of special hand made marbles. After looking over them carefully I realized that they were ideally suited for small sculptures. In addition, I have been wanting to increase the rate of growth of my portfolio. The larger pieces are wonderful, but they can take several months of free time to complete. I wanted to experiment with doing smaller works as well as make a statement about my abilities in completing a project in a shortened frame of time. These smaller pieces would also be an opportunity for those with smaller budgets – or display space – to take part in my art work.

To that end I have been working at a somewhat fevered pace and have completed several sculptures since I began in January. Making the videos takes its own time, so that has lagged a bit, but I’ve finally gotten my resources together for that work as well, and I am now able to present to you a completed video of one of the small pieces, titled “Subside-to-Side,” as well as a teaser at the end showing two of the other works that will soon have their own feature videos. I do hope you enjoy them.

“Subside-to-Side” is the first piece in which I’ve utilized sequential ball drops as their own element. They turned out quite nicely, and I think they figure well against the spirals at the beginning and end. It is listed on my web site and available for sale, so drop in and have around. Enjoy!