short-tailed albatross skull, found at Doran Beach One of the delights of daily beach-combing is how the tides always seem to churn up something new to suit the mood, especially after a storm surge. The other day I discovered the decomposing carcass of a large sea bird I did not recognize. I removed the skull […]
Category Archives: flora and fauna
Tsuru Update: Sculpting the Basswood Crane
The crane, roughed-out in layers of basswood, almost ready for shaping I’ve been laminating layers of basswood to shape into a large crane sculpture, to be cast in bronze as the feature of our Tsuru Project in Denver. With a specific gravity of 0.32 and non-directional, knot-free grain, the wood is lightweight, stable, and carves […]
Tsuru Update
the great white egret flock in the marshes around Bodega Harbor as they migrate south The Dungeness crab season officially opened in Bodega Bay over the past weekend and the beaches have been teeming with life just after dawn- fishing boats on the bay, surfers on the south swell, pelicans skimming cresting waves, geese wedging […]
Milling the Pecan Tree
My friend Sean Gavin mills logs on site with his portable Wood-Mizer I spent an action-packed weekend milling my first tree, a mature pecan (Carya Illinoensis) that grew in the sandy soil of a nearby horse pasture. The tree was beginning to die and had been dropping large branches, threatening the safety of the horses. […]
Pear Harvest
Stored in a cool place, these freshly picked pears will ripen in a few days. “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson We’ve been harvesting our pears in phases over the past week; the fruit seems to ripen unevenly on our […]
Pencil Panic
Front and back of my last box of Blue Band Velevet #5572 As a daily comfort I prefer quality, vintage pencils, which I use in the course of drawing, writing and working with wood. I’m in a bit of a panic, down to my last box of Blue Band Velvets, manufactured by the American Lead […]
Flotsam of the Day
Two views of an unidentified bone, presumably from a large fish or a sea mammal While running on the beach early this morning I was surprised to find a large, C-shaped bone in the sand, measuring about 8″ x 4″. My first thought was that it resembled part of a skate, a familiar inhabitant of […]