Hearts are a perennial favorite and make a nice gift.

Just five more minutes . . .

I've had a few cats as pets and each seems to have had some very unique and quirky traits, as all cats do. The personalities these varied creatures exhibited bordered on almost comatose to maniacally demonic. My Siamese was the most rational even though this breed seems to have a reputation as a foul tempered beast. The sleeping cat is my rendition of this cat in combination with another cat, a mongrel mixed breed that seemed to have had every genetic marker related to sleeping. This cat was almost catatonic. I had to wake it up to feed it or so it seemed. The alter ego to this cat was another randomly parented beast that seemed to be on a methamphetamine caffeine induced high. This cat quivered even when supposedly asleep. Why walk when you can run? Why stretch when you can yowl and leap from the floor to a countertop? I developed the wire frame "insomnicat" from this amazingly lively cat.

The wire flowers are evolutionary; a long time ago I had a girlfriend whose mother wanted some artwork to fill two narrow spaces on either side of a wide doorway. I painted stylized pictures of two very tall sunflowers in red clay pots. The comments she received were always positive, so when I thought about a design element in wire I revisited those flowers and narrowed them down to their basic forms. Although the wire frames are based on sunflowers the actual petal and leaf shapes are derived from many types of flowers; albeit exaggerated.

If T = ( D * p ) / ( 2 * S ), then gyrational rotation is . . . maybe chocolate mousse would be good for desert tonight . . .

The seated girl depicted in this wire form was actually based on a painting I did. The painting was originally done with no model and I couldn't for the longest time figure out why the proportions seemed off. I had a number of girls pose for sketches to see where I had gone wrong. After about six sketches I realized that in my painting one of the legs was longer than the other.

My feet are getting cold, I bet my socks are dry.

The model (let's name her Becky) I've used for a couple of poses seems to be a perpetual student. I've known her since she was a teenager and she has an amazingly diverse set of interests. She pursued photography for awhile and actually achieved some measure of acclaim in the area. She also wanted to expand on that skill set and become a photojournalist -- but not quite yet. She has an interest in archeology, only it doesn't seem to pay well enough, although she has said she would do it for free if she was independently wealthy.

It's summertime and the living is easy . . .

*nods to Gershwin

No more caffeine, please!

I wonder if yoga will do for my hair what it's done for my figure.

The young lady I used for this model (we'll call her Mandy) impresses me to no end. She has been on her own since she was fifteen and amazingly has enough drive and ambition for any two people. She completed her Industrial Design degree on her own dime with virtually no assistance from the government. Currently she works in a two person firm and is striving to become an architect. So to have her sitting and saying, "I wonder if yoga will do for my hair what it has done for my body" is actually quite out of character.

Jim likes cats and was requested to do a stylized set of hearts. The Flowers were originally fancifully painted sunflowers that the mother of a former high school girlfriend wanted on either side of a doorway. The Flowers were later adapted into the metal forms on display now.

Other upcoming projects are Bunnies.