GRASP

Step 1. Photographic "sketch" for "Grasp/Star Hand."


Step 2. Pencil sketch for "Grasp/Star Hand." Pencil on paper. 5 1/2" x 4 1/4".


"Grasp/Star Hand" by Troy's Work Table. Tempera paint, sidewalk chalk, and chalk pastels on chalkboard. Tuesday 17 May 2016. 22" x 22".

A layer of tempera paint is applied on the chalkboard in the shapes I want and allowed to dry. Then I add details in sidewalk chalk and chalk pastels.

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Each step gets a bit further from "in real life" and as it does flattens out a bit more, but I love each of these steps it its own right.

My muse had insisted that I chalk another larger-scale version of "Pluck" in sidewalk chalk at Frost Park, but I had something else in mind. I was very unhappy with the resulting chalk piece, but I should have known better than to disobey my muse. Anyway, she requested later in the day that I do a companion "hand" piece to "Pluck," so I did. The muse was happy! (And so was I.)

PLUCK

Pencil sketch of "Pluck." Pencil on paper. 4 1/4" x 5 1/2".

The muse was pressing on the notion of the Titans and the tasks to which they were fated—Atlas holding up the firmament of heaven; Prometheus stealing fire from the Olympians; Kronos eating a stone thinking it to be his infant child—as well as two non-Titan mythological figures that I conflate with the Titans—Sisyphus eternally rolling his boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down, whereupon he has to start again; and Tantalus, reaching for fruit he can never quite grab.

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"Pluck" by Troy's Work Table. Tempera paint, sidewalk chalk, and chalk pastels on chalkboard. 18" x 22". Thursday 12 May 2016.

So the orb for me is that which is plucked, be it fruit or fire or cosmos or stone. The hand doubles as instrument of plucking and pedestal. It seems as though a tree.