Eggs of Concrete - Over But Not Easy

The long awaited tree removal finally took place this spring. We had two immense pine trees downed last autumn by Hurricane Matthew. Like many folks in Orangeburg, we were put on a long waiting list for tree removal. Months rolled by, with everything in disarray and no way to get to the broken fence and the steady accumulation of seasonal debris. In a final act of exasperation, my husband contracted with city workers to come over to our house after work at the local park. They removed the trees alright, but left a path of destruction in the wake of the heavy equipment. Insurance covered neither the property damage, nor the damage from the removal. Cement walls were toppled, hillsides gauged out, gardens plowed under and a large cement platform in the corner of the yard cracked beyond repair. So for the last three months, I rolled up my sleeves and set to work repairing the yard as best as I could on my own. During the restoration, I made a number of discoveries and even found inspiration for some art work.

Inspiration can come from unusual sources. The only art work I completed recently, other than my giant painted snakes for science, were paintings of large egg shapes. Looking at them one might conclude that they are symbols of life or fertility. They are not. They were inspired by the shapes of the huge cement slabs I was trying to remove on my own but could not - until I carved them in to egg shapes and rolled them down my driveway. The largest cement "eggs" had to be manually rolled out to the street. The smaller ones, albeit still quite large, could be rolled in to a wheelbarrow and taken out that way.

My three paintings of cement eggs were painted on Masonite. I found that the stamps I had created for my science snakes fit nicely in to the oblong shapes. The acrylic paint was mixed with mica dust and the impasto texture with washes on top created a nice texture - like paint on a rock face.

For the final painting, I used sized paper. Here I used a number of large and small stamps. The small round stamps were inspired by the granite stones found in the cement aggregate. The large leaf stamps were fashioned after the leaves from the magnolia tree I passed on my route to the street. In the very center of my concrete egg, I placed a red print from a stone seal that was carved for me by a Chinese calligrapher some decades ago. The words read "persist until the very end." Three months was a long time to persist in cement removal.