In the Balinese tradition once a year, October 27 this year, is the Anniversary of metal tools. On that day you sharpen and clean your tools and offer thanks to them for allowing you do your work. Here is Anom offering blessings in Bali.
The alter is covered with elaborate floral arrangements and luscious fruit and rice offerings.
Freshly sharpened tools topped with beautiful floral arrangements and incense.
In Bali all metal tools are honored and decorated, carving tools, kitchen knives and even the bicycles and scooters.
Here is the Berkeley version as the sharpened tools got added to the alter as I finished sharpening them. They seem to carve better now.
On Thursday evening Nicole and Kyle finished Grapes and Leaves. Welcome to our group.
Art finished off 8 red-nosed reindeer ornaments for his yearly Christmas gift to his family. I knew that I had some ball head straight pins in my sewing supplies that would make a great red nose. I found 7 but didn't give up until the eighth one showed up.
Bradley finished his intarsia chipmunk. He wood-burned the stripes and other details.
Tyler helped me with an adult toymaking class that was held at the studio. She is now an "expert" at balancing the fisherman toys.
One of the balancing fishermen from the Adult class.
Moishe made three toys.
Lots of smiles and giggles.
Some were harder to balance than others but Tyler managed to get them all balancing.
Because of the change in weight of the Balancing Eskimo the fish had to be "weigh" bigger to balance.
After the Adult class Tyler did another version of the balancing fisherman using an old fashioned clothes pin and a wire hanger. She is certainly the in house expert.
Halloween fell on my Randall Museum teaching day so I brought my very first Balinese mask to wear for the KIds carving class.
Sophia models her Halloween masks from the Randal Kids Carving Class made on Oct 31.
Henry wearing his wire mesh mask made on Oct 31 and proudly used for Trick or Treating that night.
Davit and his creation.
Radhika was able to finish off her mask from the Mask carving workshop in time for a Halloween costume party. Her identity remained anonymous until she removed that mask well into the party.
A big welcome to George who recently joined our Thursday group after moving from North Carolina. George started knife carving when he retired 30 years ago. He is an expert with a whittling knife. Here he is working on the first of several traditional Swedish carved (Dalecarlian horse or Dala) horses that he has planned for Christmas gifts. The one on the right is one he completed previously and has the most delightful textural painted flowers. I can't wait to see the process for painting them.
The Randall adult carving group is doing such wonderful work on hand carved bowls and spoons. Thanks to Owen for the great walnut scraps. They are being transformed into the most beautiful pieces.
Sherman carved the most delicate and thin walled walnut bowl. It is about the size of the teacup but oval shaped.
Laura is on her second walnut serving spoon.
Yinlan carved a bowl with a cat shape. A most wonderful unexpected design element is that the grain of the bowl gives an optical illusion of the snout of the cat and from some angles it looks like a cat head rather than an cat shaped bowl.
Corey is happy about the thinning out of the sides of her bowl. There is some really wonderful tools marks on the interior. It is somewhat like looking at clouds when you can just make out different critters.
Marilyn finished her sugar pine spatula/spoon. I love the decorative ball at the spoon’s end.
Sarah is working on this lovely walnut serving spoon.
John has successfully combined a lovely soft gouge texture on the interior of his bowlWhile the outside is a striking contrast of random angular facets.
Pavel did a great job carving his flower.
Sophia with her flower carving from the Randall Kids Carving Class.
I wanted to introduce Twiggy to you all. She will be keeping the studio open on Saturday December 1, 2018 while I am attending a workshop.
Twiggy creates furniture, musical instruments, and small-scale sculpture. She likes to combine advanced digital fabrication technique with traditional handwork. At her day job, she teaches students at UC Berkeley how to operate both traditional and modern machineries. In her spare time, she likes to learn different skills of handwork such as woodcarving and stained glass.
Twiggy was in the mask workshop and carved this lovely mask. She is working on the final finishing and I can't wait to she how she handles the coloring.
This is Twiggy's first mask that she started when she was my assistant at the Sunnyside Randall Kids and Adult classes. She finished it at the studio. Lovely use of color and texture.
Wood carved furniture by Twiggy
Key board instrument from Twiggy's college study.
Electric Cello also from her graduate study.