Dirty, rotten concretions!

Amelia Earhart once said, "There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls." Unfortunately, my son Adam's kidney stones seem to be the non-rolling variety. They've managed to cause plenty of pain during the past 2 weeks but they don't appear to have any plans for rolling away anytime soon. We'll give it a bit longer but it's beginning to look like surgery is the next step.

I've featured Jay King on my blog in the past and he's become one of my favorite artists. I admire his talent and his wonderful sense of humor. When he heard that Adam was dealing with kidney stones, he created a polymer clay kidney stone just for him and labeled it a "dirty, rotten concretion." It gave us a much-needed laugh. Jay has quite a fan club and the comments under his daily Flickr offerings are almost as witty and wonderful as he is.

Although it clearly states at the top of this page that Imagine Uncommon Things is a blog about "polymer clay, creativity, rocks and other things", kidney stones aren't exactly the kind of rocks I had in mind when I wrote that. So many of you sent nice notes and left comments here when I talked about this last week and I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate all the good wishes you've sent to Adam.

I've had some requests to list my teaching schedule so I added a few upcoming classes right under my mug shot. You can drop me a line if you want info on the particulars for any of these events. I'll have more dates to add soon.

Hidden Missives

Jay King is a wonderfully talented stained glass artist from Arkansas who also happens to work with polymer clay. When I first saw all of his "faces", they disturbed me but, at the same time, I really liked what he was doing and was unable to look away. I was brave enough to write him a little note telling him about my reaction and he kindly replied that my reaction was exactly what he hoped to elicit with his work.

The more I look at these pieces, the more I like them. Some are a bit scary but I find them and the process he uses to make them quite interesting. This one, called Marid, is probably my favorite. George Washiguana and the Barnacle Encrusted Seadoll Skull are pretty amazing, as well.

Of his process, Jay says:

Most are remixes of other faces. Toys and figurines in thrift stores and antique malls provide the originals. I press molds whenever I find faces. The faces are quite small, varying in size from about a half an inch to one and half inches. Each polymer clay face I make is pressed partially into several molds. In addition to molds of faces, I also use molds of stones, wood, shell, nuts, and manmade objects of every sort. Faces are painted with acrylics and scanned. The images are then enhanced and tweaked on the computer.

If you're as intrigued as I am by Jay's artwork, you can see many more of his faces here on Flickr. The little stories and captions that he includes about each face are humorous and quite entertaining, although some of them are way over my head since I'm not a big science fiction fan.

I think I'd enjoy spending a day or two in Jay King's head. I'm guessing it's quite a fascinating place to be!