A new batch of clay horned lizards under way — early steps:

From top to bottom:

1) Rough out body shape by pinching; head and tail included in starting clay lump.

2) Create appendages: horns, limbs.  Allow to “set up” or slightly stiffen, while: refining body shape of liz.

3) Further refine body shape; note detail in head, side fringe.

The next steps are where time starts becoming a factor — these guys won’t “hatch” for quite a while yet. Stay tuned!

(Photos A.Shock)

Gila monsters (Heloderma suspectum) are large stumpy lizards with bright handsome markings that are both cryptic and aposematic simultaneously, and whose hands look like neoprene wetsuit gloves with claws.  They are remarkable for being one of only two venomous lizard species in the world.  They live in the Sonoran and southern Great Basin Deserts and love to eat quail eggs, nestling birds and mammals, and other slow-moving prey items. (Below: captive gila monster on a wooden schoolhouse floor, photo A.Shock)

Approximately life-sized clay Gila Monster “bowls” are items I only make one or two of per year or so. They’re quite time-consuming, since they’re textured, slipped, and glazed pretty much beaded scale by beaded scale.  Here’s one now :

1)  I form a blob of clay that looks like a gila monster.  This early stage is the time to get any sinuousness in the tail, neck and belly, so the clay “remembers” it.  Then it’s time to put the wet lump aside to set up, or stiffen slightly, so that it can be shaped further.  Sponges help hold a pose, if desired.  >>

2)  As the water leaves it, the clay becomes more self-supporting.  While waiting for this to happen, I make legs — oddly spindly for such a stout body — with blocked out feet, to stiffen for adding later.  I also hollow out two thick places in the monster body, to aid in drying: the head, and the base of the tail.  This also makes the completed piece lighter and better balanced.  It is important to make a tiny, invisible passage into the hollow part from the outside, to let air escape during firing, or there could be an explosion.  <<

3)   With the clay slightly stiffer, I smooth the shape into its final form, including carving the toes from the blocked-out “hands”, and rounding the belly “bowl” part.  This shape causes herp boys to giggle, because it makes the lizard look like roadkill to those with scavenging permits for heloderm pelts.  From my point of view, it makes the piece functional, if desired: an Effigy Vessel, and not just a representation.

4)  The next step is to attach the legs, and texture the skin.  This must be done at a particular point of dryness, when the clay is still wet enough to accept the stamps I use to make the “nail-heads” in the skin (Heloderma means “nail-skin”), but stiff enough to hold up to the handling and pressure of stamping it.  Then it’s waiting for it to be bone-dry for slipping (right).  >>

The belly-texture, which looks like pink-and-black Indian corn on the cob, is carved into the clay rather than stamped — this is particularly time-consuming, especially for a part that isn’t seen very frequently.  Early on, I searched the web for a reference photo for Gi-Mo belly-scales, and never found one.  Fortunately, I persuaded a handler at a wildlife education event to flip a live one up for photos (she held it vertically, not upside-down), and got this great shot, which tells me all I need to know about what the unders of a monster look like, including vent details (<< left).  You can just see the heavy-duty cowhide welding gloves the handler was wearing; they were covered with black half-moons: venom-marks from previous crabby bites.  <<

5)  Slipping an item bone dry is slightly risky, as adding water to a piece at this point can cause cracking.  But adding slip to a dry surface gives a crisper, less texture-obscuring coating.  I use a combo of commercial under-glazes and slips I make in the studio.  It’s necessary at this point to choose the subspecies: the banded H.s. cinctum from the northern part of its range, or H.s. suspectum from the southern part, which has a more complicated reticulated pattern.  This one is kind of a combo. >>

6) After bisquing, I glaze the piece with dots (another labor and time-intensive step), each dot on the raised nail-head part of the texture, with a combination of black and pinkish-orange glazes.  After it’s fired, this adds depth of color and a glint to the lizard’s skin, similar to the fresh skin of a newly-molted lizard.  Sometimes, I add a leather tongue, if the monster’s mouth has been made slightly opened.  I’m looking into making a fully-open mouth next time, with wire teeth, giving it a really venomous-looking gape.  Here’s a shot of the finished version, a little more bulbous than an authentic lizard, but — after all, it’s a bowl:

Etymology

As mentioned above, Heloderma means “nail-skin”, for the fact that the monster’s skin looks studded or beaded rather than scaled.  suspectum, the species name, comes from the fact that early herpetologists were uncertain if the animal were venomous or not, and only suspected it was because of anecdotal accounts of its potentially lethal bite.  Eventually it was confirmed by laboratory experiments, and dissection, which revealed the large venom glands in the lower jaw.

Check out more info about the natural history of these lizards here.

All photos A.Shock

…as it basks in the late autumn sun at Boyce Thompson Arboretum.

(Photo A.Shock)

Recently a neighbor came across the street to tell me in a concerned way that she had “had to” kill not just one but two non-venomous coachwhips in her yard out of fear for the safety of her pet, a feisty little terrier whom no self-respecting coachwhip would allow near enough for trouble.  So it was very good to discover that “our” coachwhips on this side of the street, whom we see with some frequency, had managed to reproduce, to help offset the unnecessary slaughter.

This handsome youngster and I surprised each other under the hummingbird feeder in the palo verde, and it held still enough for long enough that we were able to get some photos.  I suspect it was after young Tiger whiptails, among other things, as they’re still out and about (the larger adults seem already to have retreated to their subterranean refuges for the season, for the most part).  In fact, nearby on the same day, quite a young whiptail was chasing small ants with gusto.  It no longer sported its blue tail, but had the slim body and large-headedness of a young reptile.

Coachwhips (Masticophis flagellum) lay their eggs in June and July, and the young begin to maraud in August and September.  So this well-camouflaged youth is probably a month or two old, and already a whippy thin 13 or 14 inches in length.

“When frightened it flees so rapidly it appears to magically disappear into the desert,” say Brennan and Holycross in their excellent 2006 Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Arizona.  And that’s exactly how this encounter ended, when the little snakelet finally decided it was time to vamoose.

(Photos: Top: A.Shock; bottom, E.Shock)

It looks a lot like a toad, with a stumpy physique and warty skin, but it’s a Canyon Tree Frog (Hyla arenicolor).  How to tell it’s a frog? One way: no parotoid glands — instead you can see the round flat areas of its tympani (hearing structures) behind and slightly below the eye. Also, this frog has large adhesive pads on the ends of its toes to aid in climbing (after all it is a tree frog), which most toads don’t do.  Canyon tree frogs are variable in color and spottage (a technical term: feel free to pronounce it spot-AAHJ), but this individual is fairly pale and nearly spot-free. They inhabit rocky stream courses in Arizona and the Southwest with intermittent or permanent water, where they enjoy feeding upon small invertebrates. This one was photographed at Aravaipa Canyon. (Photo A.Shock, 2009)

Etymology

Hyla arenicolor: arenicolor is a Latin compound meaning sand-colored: to the Romans as well as to us, an arena is a sand-covered area.  The origin of the genus Hyla is a bit more complex, and much more picturesque.  To start, the greek work ὗλη — cognate with the more familiar Latin sylva, means woodland, and may come into play in the naming of a genus of tree frogs. But a more colorful tradition connects the genus name with Hylas, one of the original Argonauts who while searching for fresh water ashore was pulled into a woodland spring by a desirous water nymph.  Hylas’s companions — including Herakles and Jason — searched the island for him in vain, crying his name over and over: the story goes that the incessant cry of his name relates to the repetitive calling of tree frogs.

above: the story of the rape of Hylas, “Hylas and the Nymphs” by J.W. Waterhouse, 1896. If you’re lucky enough to be in London during the next couple of weeks, check out the exhibition: J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite, it’s on at the Royal Academy until 13 Sept 2009. (And, there’s a pleasing similarity between the color schemes of the Waterhouse painting and the tree frog photo at the top: the watery-brown background, ivory skin tones and heart-shaped green foliage.)

Yes, that’s “Cnemie-philia” — the love of lizards in the genus Cnemidophorus, now more properly called by their current genus name, Aspidoscelis, or Whiptails.  Our locals are Sonoran tiger whiptails (Aspidoscelis tigris punctilinealis), and they’re the most commonly seen lizard in our Phoenix area yard.  They like it hot and are out and about during the the day, except in the highest heat, constantly looking for prey such as insects and ants, which they are welcome to, as our ants have out-sized painful defense methods.  (Yet I love the ants, because they feed the flickers and the whiptails).  The young whiptails have been more in evidence recently, too — tiny whippety slippets of things, sleek and fast with brilliant blue tails that largely void their stripey camouflage against granite gravel.  Maybe the flashy and detachable nearly-neon blue tail is an effective decoy for color-visioned predators, distracting them from more critical body parts.

(Various watercolors in Arches 140 lb coldpress sketchbook, A.Shock; click image to enlarge)

Here’s a watercolor study of a tiger whiptail who, sadly, fell victim to the LaBrea Tarpit of our pool.  I finally took it out of the freezer drawer of our fridge, much to E‘s relief, although there is still a Vaejovis scorpion chilling in there (this is when zip-lock bags really shine, I feel).  When I was through drawing, I took pictures and put the limp, thawed carcass out for a Curve-billed thrasher to find for a meal, but ashes to ashes: the ants found it first, bringing the lizard’s life full circle in a nutritional sense.

Etymology

Lately I’ve been slacking off on supplying etymologies for things, but this one’s already been covered, at the very bottom of the Desert iguana post, along with a swell photo by E of a (Plateau?) tiger whiptail we saw at the Grand Canyon.

Working nocturnally in the studio gives observation opportunities not available during the sunny daylight hours.  Geckos (the non-native Euro-variety) march up and down the raccoon-ravaged screens stalking moths larger than their heads.  Here’s a picture of the ventral surface of one with a successful catch, all swallowed but for the wings, the reflection of my red clay-water bucket and camera visible in the clay-spattered glass. (Photo A. Shock)

Unsolicited plug: For those of you into such things, there’s an invaluable new field guide available, Lizards of the American Southwest, a photographic fieldguide, edited by Lawrence Jones and Robert Lovich, published by Rio Nuevo Press just this month.  Authoritative, detailed, lavishly illustrated by good photos; maybe a little big for carrying into the field, but throw it into the car for that road trip to Northern Arizona or New Mexico.  It’s all in here!

…was patrolling our yard yesterday, an overcast Thursday morning.

I was working in the studio and noticed yard birds scolding harshly.  But my brain was busy with clay, and it only spared enough attention to ID the calls — cactus wren, verdin, curve-billed thrasher — and forgot to be curious about what was setting them off.  If you’re really paying attention, sometimes it’s possible to tell from the calls whether it’s a ground predator or an aerial one — hawk, kestrel — and sometimes even if it’s cat or snake. Snake creates the most fury, or panic, and the longest-lasting, loudest scolding.  But it wasn’t until I noticed E heading outside with his camera that I thought to check out the scene.

In this case, it was the local Gophersnake (Pituophis catenifer affinis, the Sonoran Gophersnake), gliding through the dried leaf litter around the citrus trunks.  Although we can’t be sure, I suspect this is the same individual we see periodically, although it’s much longer than it was the first time we saw it a few years ago, swallowing a very young cottontail practically on our doorstep (E was able to get fabulous pictures of the process from capture through constriction through engulfing, but I’m of two minds about posting them).  Thursday’s snake was close to 5 feet long, and robust, although gophers are not as thick as rattlers.  Gophers are Arizona’s longest snake, and can reach 6 feet in length, so this guy has a way to go yet; I’m hoping he’s finding lots of roof rats to help him get there.  Right now there’s a new batch of rabbits, rock squirrels and quail around, and these along with bird eggs, other snakes and lizards would all be on his menu.

He was moving slowly around the yard, intent on any prey items he might come across, but also moving toward a daytime hiding place, so E was able to get lots of pictures.  At one point, we got a little close for the snake’s comfort, and it gave us its best impression of a defensive rattler: it pulled up into an s-curve, and gaped its pink mouth, hissing and making a mock rattling sound (photo above).

This picture also shows the amazing coloration of the gopher snake: a series of mottled chocolate brown patches and spots on a creme-colored ground, grading into a bold dark brown and yellow striped tail.  This rattler imitation is both a blessing and a curse for the snake.  No doubt it discourages many potential threats like coyotes, but it also causes people to mistake them for actual rattlers, with unfortunate results for the innocent and effective rodent-hunter.  The display was impressive; we gave him a little space, and he quickly resumed his slow perusal of the yard.  Eventually it took cover under a big quartz boulder by a fence, and that was that, until the next time.

For more info, click here to link to the useful Reptiles and Amphibians of Arizona website.

(Photos, E. Shock)

As I mentioned previously, there are two pieces of mine in the NCECA “Potters as Sculptors; Sculptors as Potters” show currently up at Mesa Community College (see the Three Star Owl Events page for details).  One of them is the long-evolving “Toadstack” (the other is Venomosity which can currently be viewed on the Home page.) As promised, here is the entire Toadstack story in pictures, culminating in the final state of the piece.  They go from L to R and Top to Bottom; don’t forget you can click on an image to enlarge it:

and the finished piece, Stacked Toad Teapot Effigy (Toadlier than Teapotly):

This show is associated with the annual NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) Convention, which opens in town tomorrow (Wed 8 April).  From now until Saturday, Phoenix will be popping with potters, sculptors, and ceramic arts educators.  The downtown Phoenix Convention Center is the main venue, where the discussions, demos, lectures, and exhibitors will be located.  There’s a fee to attend that part of the conference, but there are many many galleries, museums and other display venues which have shows up featuring the work of both nationally known and local clay artists, and these shows are FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

So if you like looking at the broad range of contemporary ceramic artwork and what’s being made in America today in clay, check out the NCECA website for lists of and maps to the concurrent shows and outlying venues which are all over the metro area.  Principal show clusters are located in Tempe, in and around the ASU Campus; Mesa, at both the Community College and the Arts Center; downtown Phoenix in the hotels around the Convention Center; and Scottsdale, in the Old Town Arts District, a fun and stimulating place to visit anyway.  It’s a great time in Phoenix to Get Out and See Art.