Wednesday, August 08, 2007

project 365 #218: my soapstone dog

On Monday night I went to a small stone carving workshop and it was totally fun. I think I've discovered a new hobby. Soapstone carving, it turns out, is extremely easy and, to make things even more excellent, surprisingly cheap, in that you can carve this stuff with, like, paring knives and a nail file. I was a little dubious at first, since we had to start with precut forms that were, predictably, a coyote, a buffalo or a bear. (You may have noticed, as I have, that soapstone is the accepted media for bear sculptures. Your half naked women with laurel wreaths or conquering heroes on horseback get bronze but bears? Soapstone.) However, I was kind of glad of the form and anyway, I quickly turned my coyote into a dog. "This looks like a dog," said the teacher suspiciously, "Do you want it to be a dog? I can make it back into a coyote for you."

"NO!" I said, "I want it to be a dog." She handed it back with a look that clearly said I was nuts for preferring dogs over coyotes but there you have it. Among other things, I've only ever seen like 3 coyotes in my life and I didn't exactly get a chance to study them, whereas I am somewhat familiar with dogs. Somewhat.

No comments: