Spring/Summer 2017 Newsletter – Sphere Cutting Heaven

The stone is a creation’s starting point.
The stone delivers the spirit of the design, it imposes its will.
-Jacqueline Karachi-Langnue, Creative Director, Cartier

BENEATH THE WORK

What are those wildly flowing bubbling components coming out of this volcano? They symbolize the incredibly toxic gases that it is emitting.

The inspiration for “The Enemy Within: Mt. Erebus Volcanism & Ozone Depletion” came from the scientific discovery that the gas emissions from Mt. Erebus caused the depletion of the ozone layer above Antarctica. Although it has been active over a million years, Mt. Erebus was extremely active in the early 1980’s, pumping kilotons of toxic gases into the stratosphere. These gases have been shown to ascend to these heights through high-latitude cyclones over the Ross Sea, stimulating ozone depletion.

Recently, “The Enemy Within: Mt. Erebus Volcanism & Ozone Depletion” took first place at the Colorado Mosaic Artists themed exibit, “Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.” The National Center for Atmospheric Research is hosting the CMA exhibit in Boulder, Colorado which will run through June 2nd.

IN THE STUDIO

So, how do we cut spheres to create the effect of gas bubbles? We recently purchased a new saw and have been in sphere-cutting heaven. A few dozen spheres have been piling up over the last year, but what good is a whole sphere??

Below is our sphere-cutting process:

IN THE NEWS

On May 24th, Bonhams, Los Angeles is offering at auction my piece:

“Fossiliferous I: Cambrian through Cretaceous”, Lot 2018

“Fossiliferous I: Cambrian through Cretaceous” is a stone relief sculpture that shows a glimpse of the colorful paleontological history of the earth. This stratigraphic column depicts the eleven periods from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous with 27 inlaid fossils from around the world. Fossilized trilobites, crinoid stems, seed ferns, sand dollars, and sea urchins are precisely placed in a background of varying stone slabs. The piece measures 15.5 by 29 inches.

Here is a link to the online catalog:
Bonhams Auction: Lapidary Works of Art, Gemstones, Minerals, and Natural History.
May 24th, 2017 at 10:00am.
My piece is on page 15.