Thread: Art Beyond the Labyrinth 3....

Hello everyone. I decided due to the fact I now have important clientele for my sculpture studio I would clear my journal to be certain I did not unwisely mention business details best left unsaid. To start things off I have rewritten two post from my original journal in this first posting; INTRO & TITLE MEANING.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION TO THIS JOURNAL:

Hello, my name is Stephen Casey.

I think my over wordy ways have encumbered others threads, particularly Kim?s Journal far too much. You folks and your readers have been more than kind and patient for all my long winded diatribes, self lofting and occasional (mostly deleted) blue humor.

I won't pretend this thread will be primarily low-carb in posting. But hopefully Andrea will have patience with me and not kick me off into the ether. I do intend to be more LC supportive in other areas of Low Carb Eating.

While speaking of our host LCandea I will state a little something. Andrea thank you very much. Thank you Andrea for building and maintaining such a wonderful and enriching web space for all of us to hang out in and share our thoughts and recipes.

For a little humor you can look for my images in the LCE photo album.

As the title of this post hints I will give a synopsis of how productive or non-productive I have been with my art form - sculpting.

EVERYONE is welcome to post here in my journal. Particularly if you bring me to task with my art or health pursuits.

Low-carb-eating is an important part of my life; truly a life saver in my case. As I was at the point of serious stroke symptoms and this last ditch attempt turned the tide quickly and with no loss in eating satisfaction. I was only 220 at 5? 9? But for this particular body with a ton of family history of early hardening of the arteries that weight was potentially lethal. Currently I am maintaining 180 ponds and this could use improvement and will get it. Personally I very much enjoy the challenge of creating recipes that are not only low-carb friendly but also often diabetic friendly and VERY importantly easy on the checkbook.

So let the ranting and raving begin. Everyone is welcome even manic-depressive, care-giving, co-dependant, half-breed, obsessive fools such as myself. Yes I am a half breed as my father swam across the great lakes.

JOURNAL TITLE MEANING:

Art Beyond the Labyrinth?.

My income is from Social Security Disability Income. 864 bucks a month and I am grateful to get it. But I intend to move beyond that.

I have had businesses in the past but the last 8 years of my working years was spent in monkey brains work due to mental and physical illness. Delivery work was as complicated as I could consistently accomplish and that was bloody hard. Often a living hell.

I have manic-depression and symptoms very similar to TIAs, that is baby brain strokes. And still have to deal with transient symptoms to some degree but this is lessening to a very workable state. In the past I have had to deal with low functioning communication skills, blurred vision and slurred speech and most importantly fuzzy simplified mind states. Enough confusion that I gave up my driving entirely for a few years and use the excellent Tacoma bus system. My vision and competency has been plenty good enough over the last year but in order to invest maximally in my business I have opted to forgo a car for the time being.

And my manic-depression is by no means a small problem. I take a full load of prescription medication daily, and GLAD TO TAKE MY MEDICATIONS. With them I can communicate competently with the other 97% of humanity and get on with my life. I have dear friends that are manic-depressive but that is only a portion of my life. Everyone grows at their own pace.

It took seven years of medicine trials to bring my hypo-manic manic depressive aspects under reasonable control. This diagnosis means I tend to be on the upside more than down. Although the manic-depression is under excellent control I continue to involve myself in care-giving situations. After a 17 year situation starting when I was 11, there is always the predisposition to throw my self into these situations. Frankly my father disappeared when I was 11 and my mother had a nervous breakdown, then and there I swore I would never abandon this woman the way my father had. And to her dying breath 17 years later I kept that oath. So I am hard wired this way and I do accept this is the way I am. This last year I took on two separate care giving adventures and completed them quite successfully while still continuing my business development and passed on the situations to the proper county health resources and family members once those situations were manageable by them.

Where does the art mentioned in the title come into play? Good question. For about 9 years I tried to get either of two books completed. One crime thriller and one self-help. But when I am super competent, (not manic just at my best) I would take the novel and or the book to the next level and morph the things into yet bigger projects I could not handle when TIA ill.

I finally decided to gently put the books aside and there they will remain until I am much healthier.

I then set out to find a business I could develop with my current abilities. I have owned and operated many businesses in my lifetime so I had a lot of freedom in some ways but next to nothing in investment capitol. I finally came to the conclusion the smart play was to generate art sculpture prototypes to be cast in polymers or pewter (that is a inexpensive white metal.) My first idea was to do more than was wise to attempt off the bat, a very advanced collectors medieval chess set. Then finally arriving at building monster kits for the garage kit market. Like white plastic car models men glue together and then paint with exacting accuracy and effort but monsters instead a small but dedicated and growing market. In this case usually the hobbyist uses a $300 air brush rig and does fine layered flesh tones with an air brush like a magazine cover artist would use. During this learning phase I developed fine art concepts with excellent market potential and ease of penetration without copy write concerns.

I have socially significant sculpture I wish to do as well but will leave them for the hopefully not too distant future when the level of my craftsmanship is far better refined as well as the ability to purchase the materials for the larger sculpts. In the mean time I will enjoy the bliss that comes from sculpting these other projects some beautiful, some utilitarian and some humorous.

Over the last 18 months I have slowly bought and made the tooling and sampled dozens of sculpting mediums as well as educational DVDs and print media to enable me to pull this off. As well as developing projects that have room for growth and are not already over developed. Of course practice and created my own sculpting techniques.

I know a great business model when I see it. And this studio is such a business. Yet with my physical and mental disabilities at first it was very much like traversing a giant maze that may or may not have an exit. Alas I have found that exit and it is not sunset, but instead a glorious sunrise.

I have been away quite awhile but for good reason. By way of serindipidy I have made contact with the predsident of a small US firm that wants me to sculpt and preferably produce a few small figurative sculptures for meduim runs of high margin product.

Translated this is a very good thing. Cash on the barrel head you might say. We are a ways from coming to a middle ground on many of the details. But this could scoot me off of SSDI and flush my studio with enough cash to finance all my fine art projects as well as put my friend Dusty to work within six months.

The other party is aware of my disabilities but also is aware of my creative vision, industry knowledge and other skills. A small risk of money for them and a small risk of time for me. But likely we will both benefit from the association even if product is never actually produced. Indeed I believe we both have already benefited.

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My health is very good. My anatomy studies have been side tracked some but this is acceptable. Tomorrow I will be digging back into them mostly to give myself a rest from my recent new product research. I know that sounds like an oximoron but I really do enjoy studying human anatomy.

Roses today for Short & Sassy and Tall & Sexy and myself as I vistited My FavExW today. We were both a bit tired but still had a fairly good visit . I think I best look in on her in the next few days though. I bought her a harmonica; something she enjoyed very much at one time.

I want to check in on my LCE friends but I really need to get my gluteus maximus in bed as I am expecting an important call early tomorrow. Take care everyone. I hope you are all well....

Hi Stephen! Just passing by to say hello! Good luck on this new venture!

Good golly, good golly almighty! Almost a month since I posted; that is plain wrong.

Hello my dear friends I will be checking in on some of your journals tonight. My business has sapped all my energies of late. But that is not a terrible thing as it is time for me to take my endevours to the next level. I didn't get to sleep until 4:00 AM this morning finishing up a presentation and website work.

All with record heat. 88 degrees today but no wind. I want my usual cloudy days back! I moved 2000 miles to get away from the heat. Anyhow...

My local friends are all doing well. I saw my FavExW today; she is doing great. She sent me home with 8 Oriental Lillys for the other ladies. I meant to take a picture before I gave them all away but forgot. The sun sapped my common sence. Well I am going to go cruise the forums for a change, I missed that. Later...

Cash flow problem had me out in the heat a lot today. By the time I got to the book store the backpack of books for study were just dead weight. Too pooped to focus.

So a good afternoon of goofing off. I sometimes forget that is important too. Feeling much better. With a good night sleep tonight I should be ready to slay all evil dragons in my path.

Some research related to my website development came together this morning quite surprisingly. Tomorrow I plan to tinker with that some and overall strategize and some more dedicated goofing off tomorrow night before the next big push. Namely learning and sculpting a proof of commercial concept.

Stephen - glad you got some goofing off time. I know how hard you've been working lately. Have a great Day!

Thanks Rob, yes indeed I have been working hard. Over the next few days I will get to play-work in the clay instead of just studying.

Up late again this morning for some, time sensitive work. Hopefully this will not happen again for quite a while. Several months in fact.

The heat has finally let up here in Washington state. I certainly hope it does the same elsewhere across the USA.

Yesterday I learned just how very much Ginkgo Biloba has added to my calmness of mind and ability to learn these last few months. I had a half dose day before yesterday and none until I got to the vitamin store yesterday about noon. Truly scatter-brains-ville. It is not for everyone especially for those taking blood thinners but 120 mg of Ginkgo Biloba a morning is helping me a great deal.

Being as I am rather exhausted this afternoon even after a good meal and a nap I will simply re-watch some anatomy educational videos. Have a great evening everyone....

The Gingko Biloba sounds just right for you Stephen - glad things are going well for you. Have a good weekend.

Stephen - thanks or the reminder about Ginkgo Biloba. I just ordered some after you mentioned it. My memory could sure use some improving.

Nice to see you Stephen! Glad your new venture is going so well and your health is improving. I think of you often my friend.

I wish I liked the taste of the Gingko - be nice not to have to cudgel my brain every morning!

Thanks for stopping by everyone.

Flower always nice to see your rose flashing those delightful colors.

Ya Rob get that Ginkgo Biloba.

Fox GB certainly helps me a great deal. It is supposed to improve circulation in some parts of the brain and I do believe it. Being on the slightly manic side of manic-depressive. It by default seems like I have too many thought going all the time. But I am finding that the GB helps me to carry each thought to a completion.

Calm cool confidence. Something that was hit and miss even with a ton of prescription psychotropics. In fact I am going to strongly recommend it for my FavExWife.

I spent the day cleaning up the sculpting area and tightening up the choice of source art and repasting it for the commercial sculpt I am working on. I expected to be in the clay today but that?s the way the ball bounces.

After watching Freedomland with Short & Sassy tonight and returning to the studio. It rather shocked me to find my work area so orderly. I refuse to do dishes or anything of the kind until I get this next rough sculpt done.

GoDaddy is my website hosting vender and I had to have them flush my SSL (Secure Socket Layer) for my site (still in development) as it wasn't doing what I need. I will be purchasing single SSL for two domains instead of their 6-in-1 package. At least they refunded my money for the services that did not work out. Their commercials likely offend a lot of people but they have been good to me so far. Tech support always there and fairly knowledgable.

I see it is way past my bed time and I have heaps of work to do tomorrow so I best sign off. Have a great day tomorrow everyone....

Finally back in the clay! A little hardware run this morning but other then that sculpting alllllll daaaaaay long.

Monday and Tuesday should be the same. I need to send some progress shots to my distributor so I can not let anything distract me. Talked to my FavExW and she was very supportive of my need to stay home tomorrow and sculpt and miss our weekly visit. She is doing fine.

I have elected to sculpt my current anatomical in two identical sculpts as I go along. The first being more the practice piece and the second being closer to usable. This is a proof of concept-talent piece anyhow and the final will be done afterward. I sculpt rather fast and that is a good thing as there is a ton of angles and bulges on my current piece.

Working in Y-2 Klay by Chavant. But some of it looks to be best to be done in Premo by Polyform the people that make Sculpey. Premo is as you might suspect very similar but higher end and a tad more expensive. I have one figurative piece that I will be doing along with this one but will start it a bit later.

I best get something cooking as my belly is growling. Later....

Spent the day in mind numbing Photshop work. Tightening up source art so I get preportioning just right. Now I think I will go stick my finger in a light socket so I can wake up....

Stephen - light socket - finger perhaps not my friend!