Updating with words seems to be difficult when I've ignited the visual side of my brain. Sculpting on Six Million Pod has reached what feels like an endless plain that stretches before me each day. The shape of the sculpture is becoming less and less like the star it was originally which is good as I wanted to get rid of the sharp edges and bring in the undulating waves. The only problem now is that I am adding so many toothpicks that I feel like I can't see a difference anymore. I continually pull away to try to see development and evidence that I'm nearing 2 million toothpicks but it keeps looking the same as before. I took a break the other day and felt odd not sculpting as its as important to me as breathing. I don't think I'll do too many more days of not sculpting as I didn't like the break. I have been plagued by headaches due to other things and find that the act of repeatedly laying down patterns of toothpicks helpful to work through the complexities of the pain. Everything is in colour sheets of pattern which I try to put down in the sculpture. I can look back on sections of the sculpture and recognize where I was and what I was thinking or listening to at the time I made it. 

The eye opener and refresher in a way is when I think of the lives the toothpicks represent and then I feel like the sculpture is screaming or being given a voice. I've started to add on my Six Million Facebook page the donations relating to the lives each donation represents which I am adding to my website too. Its helping me see clearer more than anything as I do feel overwhelmed with the heavy concept of lives represented and lost or remembered. I also feel like I need to read more about the Holocaust as although I've read and read and researched and researched I still feel like I don't know enough to be doing this sculpture. I feel like its not enough. Maybe when I reach six million I will change how I'm thinking. I hope it makes a difference.
 
 
I should have written about my summer toothpick adventure weeks ago after my return to the US but I admit I've been enjoying a break from computers with more time in studio during my return. Today I am striving to update all that I neglected and also start projects I've only thought of so far.

In early June I traveled back to London to take part in the Parallax Art Fair which meant I stayed in a wonderful place in St. Albans and sculpted every day to have a new piece ready for the show. I sculpted the Fibonacci Fold Pod and have never worked so fast for so many long hours on a sculpture before. But it was a lot of fun and I met a great deal of very interesting people. I did a great deal of walking and as I'm fascinated by history and nature I soaked up anything I could find about historical local landmarks as well as spending long hours walking through ancient woodlands. The exhibition was held in the first week of July. Our opening evening coincided with the Harry Potter Premiere in Trafalgar Square which was just a stones throw away so the crowds around the Royal Opera Arcade were incredible! The other artists exhibiting with me were amazing and have inspired me in ways I never thought possible! All in all it was a great experience and I'm very pleased to have been a part of it.
I was very fortunate to find an interested art gallery willing to display my sculpture once Parallax Art Fair was over. I'm also very grateful to a good friend for helping me transport my sculpture from the Royal Opera Arcade to the Ladak Art Gallery in East Sheen as I know I would have been lost without her help! The Ladak Art Gallery is run by Amin Abdula and the other art work he has there is very interesting. He is a lovely man and I'm very lucky to have found such a place. I've been making a fishing line hammock to send him so that he can suspend the Fibonacci Fold Pod from the ceiling as it is a rather odd shape and so far can only either lie longways on something or else stand up wedged in a corner!
On returning to the US I had to restart my fishing line hammock more than three times as I soon found I was unable to control the inevitable tangling that happened the moment I took it off the loom. I also tried knitting the threads together but this didn't work as I had hoped so I went back to my loom/weaving idea but made some adjustments. I'm surprisingly still working on this hammock but I feel its going better even though I've turned my living room into a weaving conveyor belt surrounded by debris from past attempts!
School is starting up and I'm gearing up to begin teaching again and excited about so much in the art room that I don't know where to really begin!
I have had to force myself to take a few weeks break from sculpting as my wrists were worn out from building my sculpture in the summer. Repetitively squeezing a hot glue gun can really cause significant pain if done for many long hours day after day. I think though that once school properly starts and I'm teaching then I'll be back to sculpting as to be so surrounded by art will be hard not to be immersed in the sculpting part of it!


 
 
I have been interviewed for my sculpture 'Six Million Pod' which is tremendously exciting as I hope it will help bring some more focus to my project! To see the article please go to this link.
I've already had a wonderful flow of donations recently through the school where I teach which is magnificent and I'm super pleased with the interest in my sculpture. I've just finished documenting the recent donations for my website and for my facebook page for Six Million Pod. Its so exciting and inspiring to have so much sudden interest and I must say its helped keep me going longer in the studio than any other week!
Months ago I had hoped to be reaching the 2 million mark by June but it's looks like it will be more like September or October before I reach that mark. My participation in my upcoming show in London will take me away from Six Million Pod for all of June and the first week of July. I'm feeling a little guilty about that time away but also excited to work on another smaller sculpture for just that short time. It will be strange to be doing a sculpture that will probably only consist of around fifty thousand toothpicks instead of the thousands and millions I'm striving for with Six Million Pod. And again here I go on with all those numbers for a sculpture I don't want to be a number but the symbol of a tapestry of many many lost lives. When I was daydreaming at all the boxes of donated toothpicks earlier I was thinking that it would be a nice thing if Time could be reversed and all the thousands of toothpicks in those donated boxes could represent lives that could be saved rather than lost...I was thinking how different the world would be now if we could reverse Time like that.
 
 
If you are going to be in London, England between July 8th through 10th then please come see one of my toothpick sculptures on display at a show called 'Parallax AF'.
I will be traveling to London in early June to spend the month creating a new toothpick sculpture specifically for this show. I have been reading a great deal on several idea's I'd like to try out for sculptures and as I only have a month to build it then I expect it to not be as dense as say 'Six Million Pod'!
My thoughts have wandered repeatedly back to the Fibonacci sequence in nature and so I'm toying with the idea of a folded double Fibonacci shape. The only problem is that as I heavily use my synesthesia to sculpt with and due to the word 'Fibonacci' being dominantly white then I'm having to really search for 'white' sounds which is proving somewhat tricky as white is not common in my sound-scapes. So there's some rethinking going on for finding sounds for perhaps orange as the shapes indicate.
Parallax AF means that for the month of June and part of July, I will have to stop work temporarily on my 'Six Million Pod' sculpture which for some time has been growing and growing in size as I've worked on it daily since September '10. I think I'm looking forward to this break from it to work on something else for a short time but will be eager to return to it in July. I'm really excited to be able to take part in the show in London and extremely curious to meet all the other artists exhibiting with me. I also can't wait to get back to London after years of being away as I'm looking forward to the museums and galleries and also to silly things like being able to speak and not to be asked where I'm from!
 
 
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Six Million Pod and Me. Currently at 1,137,000 toothpicks so far.
Six Million Pod is growing and getting heavier and heavier and more and more dense. I've had some great people donate toothpicks for this and am going through about one thousand toothpicks every four hours or so. I'm amazed at how fast this is moving along and even at just over one million I can't believe what that number looks like. When you translate that number to individual humans its shattering and I'm not even close to being finished yet. In my mind when I sculpt I imagine that each toothpick I lay down is a memory from one person from some part of their life. Its helping to keep it more about the people than the number. I imagine if I was one of the six million which memory would I choose to be represented for my life and its hard to think about. I would want it to be a happy memory though and perhaps and inspiring one too.
The hardest part about doing this sculpture is trying to drum up an interest in other people. I want to make a difference with this sculpture but that's hard to do if so few know about it. That's still something I'm working on too so hopefully things will pick up soon and maybe more will want to donate toothpicks to this project.



 
An Amazing Week 02/19/2011
 
Late last week I entered Studio 360's Material Mashup project and put in a photo of myself holding one of my sculptures. There were lots of other very interesting creations so I felt like I was in good company for strange creations!
I was selected as one of three winners for this project and interviewed for it too which was fun.

Here's the link for the radio interview that went on their website yesterday.

It's been a while since I've had a week where I've said 'wow' so often!
 
 
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Six Million Pod sitting in the snow
I'm in the midst of an all night sculpting session and had to take a break to think. I'm under the one million mark on Six Million Pod and hugely aware of how massive this is not just in numbers of toothpicks but the lives lost that each toothpick represents. I think this is going to take a lot longer than I ever anticipated. I'm sculpting on this piece six hours minimum a day and on days I have free I'm clocking eighteen hour sessions like this one. Still I don't seem to make a dent but I'm not stopping. I'm going to see this through. Its gotten to a stage where I'm creating spirals over spirals over spirals which is good for strength but it just looks like millions of eddies in a giant river. I'm following and relying heavily on yellow sounds for the spirals so I'm still referencing laughter and other high sounds which makes me feel strange as its not exactly a happy sculpture so should laughter be an element? I'm thinking of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel and someone else that I don't want to mention here for the moment.

I think a lot about the spiral Milky Way and life in general while I'm making this piece. Big thoughts are stemming from this sculpture and playing over and over in my mind. I hope my thoughts are permeating into the sculpture and I hope it changes people's idea's of what a vast number like six million really is. At just under one million toothpicks, I'm stunned at the amount and I'm not even close to completing this sculpture yet.

One toothpick = One Life....it really makes my heart thud.
 
 
I haven't been able to update my website in what seems like forever. Last september I suddenly found myself happily with a teaching job which is what I've been striving towards for such a long time. I teach art and its a lot of fun as I teach middle school kids to high school who are all fascinating to work with as their imaginations and ways of thinking are so new and bright that it opens my eyes to how their brains work at different levels in perception. Its truely fascinating and good hard work too. Hence my difficulty in keeping up to date on my own artistic endeavors.
I have been sculpting too and though I'm far behind where I'd like to be I've made enough progress on the Six Million Pod to feel somewhat better about it. A few toothpick donations have come through which I've incorporated into the sculpture and now I've got to take time to take some pictures to update that side of things.
2011 has brought new and exciting adventures and I'm looking forward to the latest adventure of seeing images of my work on TV. This is for Comcast On Demand - Activity TV - Foil Crafts and I'm excited to see it and to be part of it too. Such an opportunity and what a lovely start to the New Year!
I also have a proper studio now which is very exciting and less back breaking when it comes to working on my sculptures as the system I had before always left me with a back ache when the sculptures got too big to hold.
There are still a few more sticks in the fire but for now I don't want to say anything as I don't want to jinx anything which makes me sound like I'm five but who cares!

 2011 is so far very exciting and I can't wait for what's just around the next corner!
 
 
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Seriously though, what does six million look like? I've read the number and know its a vast amount but as I'm a visual person I can't really comprehend what six million really is.
It represents the estimated Jews killed during World War 2 which is where my mind is as I've been trying to understand the number. One of those six million Jews was a member of my family and I don't know much about her except that she was very old, she had some connection to opera singing and she was a Jew. I found her name on a list of murdered which was a little unsettling.
So in order to visually understand what six million is I want to create a sculpture that consists of six million toothpicks. I did start this sculpture during the summer but didn't say much as I was still trying to work out how I was going to do this. Its currently only sporting under 2,000 toothpicks and is in the shape of the Star of David. I did cheat a little and used bamboo skewers to start the frame but the rest is all toothpicks and will continue to be toothpicks until I reach the six million mark.
I do want it to be something where people can contribute to it by way of donating to me a box of toothpicks whether they are survivors of the Holocaust or descended from survivors or just because they want to be a part of this project.
Another reason I want to do this sculpture is because it could help open peoples eyes to things in this world that we must remember and understand.
I don't know if I can change the world with a toothpick but it might be fun to try!

So if you have just read this and think you would like to join in and donate a box of toothpicks to this sculpture then:

Send a box of round or square wooden toothpicks, plain or colored and unused.

To: Toothpick Moon, P.O. Box 802103, Dallas, TX 75380-2103

Please include your name, your reason for donating to me and where you are from.

I want to be able to list the names of the people who have donated to this sculpture.

Thank you for all who choose to take part in helping me reach six million toothpicks!
 
 
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I just posted a new video to my Multimedia page which is a small glimpse into my current sculpture and work in progress - Jupiter Saturn Pod.

It's still got a long way to go yet but I wanted to show how it looks when it moves and before I finish encasing it in sound. For Jupiter Saturn Pod I've been referencing a work colleagues music which is titled 'Light Brite' by Sleep Whale. I've found fantastic visual landscapes from their work which has been really helpful for building up the external skeleton shape of my sculpture.