Weasels and stoats are not welcome in New Zealand, although they live there.  But they’re not native, and as opportunistic and energetic predators they’re particularly dangerous for the few remaining species of indigenous birds, many of which are ground-nesters, having evolved on an island on which there are no native species of mammal except bats, and no snakes at all.

So we shouldn’t have enjoyed seeing a fierce European invader and eater of eggs and nestlings, but we watched this little stoat playing “kill the pine cone” around a heap of cut pine boughs at the edge of a pasture.  Its mock-predatory antics were so fast it defied being captured on camera, but when it stopped playing to check us out, E got a shot.

(Photo E. Shock)

Yes, and we did!  Also very large eels that live in very small streams, and giant crickets called Weta.  Moreporks (New Zealand’s only native owl) made themselves heard, although not seen.

The kiwi on the right is carved from Kauri, the huge New Zealand tree which isn’t like any other tree I’ve ever seen. The photo below is a Kauri, and not one of the biggest.  There aren’t many left on North Island — they were too tempting a source of building material for the folks clearing the native bush for homesteads and pastures, and it’s a mixed experience to visit the Kauri Museum, which is as much a glorification of the Kiwi Bushmen (loggers) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as it is a memorial to the great trees they harvested.

(The second in a series: read the first here)

The next session at the Ganskopf Foundation Library was much like the last (the first I omitted because no drawing actually occurred, just filling out lengthy forms, and being issued a visitor’s ID).  This second appointment had also been arranged by Professor Harrower.  Once again he’d sent the list of three accession numbers to request for illustration by regular postal mail — I still haven’t met him in person.

After I’d signed in and passed through the security turnstyle, the same librarian, Miss Laguna, came out of the glass office to meet me.  Like last time, I was the only patron there.  I handed her the note with the acquisition numbers of the target owls.  She seemed to hesitate slightly when she saw it and read the numbers, but she disappeared into the secure stacks and left me at the same table as before to set up my graphite pencils, kneaded eraser, and pad.  This time I had brought my own desk lamp, and plugged it in where she had indicated.  The stronger directional light made a big difference: fluorescent ceiling lighting flattens everything out and distorts color.

When she returned, Miss Laguna had three “fetishes” on the black pillow, and as she walked two of them clunked together a little at each step.  Her casualness about this, after last time with the rubber gloves and special measures, was surprising.  These owls were larger than the previous selections, each being several inches long, and made of what looked to me like pine bark.

Here are brief descriptive notes from that session:

• GKC/orn247 a-b (shown above, green background): these two squat, eccentric owls are very similar to item GKC/orn872b which I drew last time: “eared” owls made of bark, probably pine.  They differ from the earlier one in that more deliberate geometric and linear carving has been made on their surface, instead of merely allowing the fissures in the bark to show owlishness.  My unscientific response is that these carvings are humorous, and they make me laugh.  I’ve drawn them together since they seem, at least by accession number, to be associated, although to my eye they don’t have much else in common, other than being small pinebark owls.
• The third figure, GKC/orn644f (right), seems too large to call a “fetish” — it’s 10.3 cm in height, and what I would characterize as anthropomorphic: it looks like an “Owl-man” because its legs are long and end in paw-like feet rather than talons.  As with the other two, the back is flat and un-altered, except for a vertical groove indicating the legs, which corresponds poorly to the one in the front.  I find this one a bit creepy: with no arms (or wings) and an uneven, stretched silhouette, it seems like a hostile doll, up to no good when no one’s looking.

But creepy or humorous, these pieces looked to me like indigeno pine bark carvings sold in tourist shops in Chihuahua — admirable folk art, but not “mystery relics” as they’re being called in the press, and not particularly ancient.  However, I’m not an expert.

I mentioned that to Miss Laguna, and asked if she knew why the Herr Doktor Ganskopf had collected them, but her answer was incomplete, something like, “They’re cute, but the other one is more…”  I asked if she meant Creepy Owl-man, but she said no, the simpler pine-bark owl from my previous visit. When I asked if it would it be possible to see that one again, she told me it was on loan that week, and lifted the pillow with the fetishes and took them back to the secure stacks.  I unplugged my lamp so the bulb had time to cool.

The only other thing that happened was that when I got out to the parking lot, it was raining and the car had a flat tire.  Glen, the parking attendant, offered to put the doughnut on for me, but I told him it was a rental, and they would fix it.  It took the rental company guy forever to find the place, but he finally arrived and took care of it.

Easter mornings are often spent focused on the ground in an Easter Egg hunt, a ritual seeking delightfully chthonic goodies on a day of rising up.  But our Easter walk in Papago Park was filled with airy trophies instead: birds in trees.  And the birds were obliging. Once seen perched safely on high, they stayed to be photographed, preoccupied with their own activities — singing, like the Ash Throated Flycatcher (“k-brick, k-brrr”) and the Mockingbird, or glaring, like the Loggerhead shrike and the immature Cooper’s hawk.  The young hawk didn’t stir as we passed Its Fierceness fairly close to the trail: it appeared to be waiting on the tip of a palo verde snag for the warming air to create wing-filling thermals, so it could continue its northward journey.

Click on an image to enlarge; the Cooper’s hawk’s glare is better bigger.

(From top to bottom: Ash-throated flycatcher; Northern mockingbird; Loggerhead shrike; immature Cooper’s hawk.  All photos E. Shock)

Hen update with photo. The Stalwart Hen and her Nidlings (the Anna’s hummingbird and her nestlings in our backyard pinetree) are still hanging in there, despite a night of unseasonal wind and cool rain.  In this photo, the bottom side of the tip of one of the nidling’s beaks is just visible at the left edge of the nest, above a nearly horizontal pine needle.  From the upper window, I can see two nestlings clearly, but the window screen makes focusing a photo tough from there.  The two Nidlings have grown enough so that they fill the cup of the nest, and their little beaks stick upward over the edge.  Each day the beaks are getting longer and darker, but they’re still nowhere near final hummer-length.  Go Hen Go!

The past three days I’ve been immersed in clay.  Sounds muddy, but what I mean is, of course, NCECA: demos, tools, galleries, other clay artists, techniques, long-time friends from St. Louis, Metro Light Rail, even a little shopping, and downtown Phoenix: all those things compressed into a fairly short amount of time, in three long but stimulating days.

The Potters as Sculptors, Sculptors as Potters show was fabulous, and folks who made the trip out to Mesa Community College saw a broad yet focused themed show that added a lot to the exhibition experience at NCECA.  The room was light and spacious, and packed full of pairs of pieces showing the range in various artists’ work, and how they deal with the duality of making both vessels and sculpture.  (Here’s a shot looking into the gallery.  My pieces, Stacked Toad Teapot Effigy and Venomosity are the two objects nearest to the camera.)  Saint Louis clay artist James Ibur finessed an adroit and thoughtful piece of curation in organizing this show, as well as doing a lot of hard work.

The bulk of the event was deep in the bowels of the Phoenix Convention Center, and almost all of it was nearly simultaneous.  To make the most of NCECA you have to be good at time management and willing to switch gears mid-stream.  I watched a Korean Onggi potter make really big pots in the traditional style.  He made the coil of beige clay at his foot by stretching 25 pounds of clay all at once on the floor like a giant taffy loop.  He would then rest the coil on his shoulder while feeding it onto the top of the pot.  He said at home each potter made 30 of these in a day!  That’s a lot of kim-che storage — and a lot of clay.

There were also on-site installations constructed during the course of the meeting, like this one of a California gray whale made of clay packed onto slat-armature.  The mini-whale in red clay on the boxes is the artist’s maquette, and you can just see a few slats still un-clayed at the far left edge of the photo.

The NCECA exhibitors’ hall is also a great place to shop for the latest tool, equipment, or silly clay tee-shirt (“Throwing my life away” “Tee-shirt for my clay body”, etc).  But the best tool ideas I picked up were being used by the demonstrators, like this one used by the Korean potter above: it’s a wooden hand-held anvil used on the inside of the pot while the outside is beaten with a wooden paddle.  This thins the clay and compresses it, making the walls of the pot stronger and reinforcing the joins between the coils.  Wood tends to stick to wet clay, so the face of the tool has been textured so it releases more easily.  It also leaves a great texture behind.  But, it wasn’t available for sale in the exhibition hall, so if you want one, you’ll have to make it yourself (I’ve always used a river-cobble as an anvil).

I mentioned shopping, and that’s because much of the art on display was for sale.  Probably the most notorious selling frenzy at the conference is the Cup Benefit sale, where artists donate cups for a sale, the proceeds of which go to art scholarships.  The cups are displayed for two days, then, on the third day, they throw open the doors and let people in a few at a time to shop. The cups are donated by lots of artists, from plain folk to rock-star potters — the most famous names in the business — so the line to get in is long, and people arrive early.  By early I mean 4.30am!  Although I had my eye on a specacular piece with burrowing owls stencilled on it, it was long gone by the time I got in.  So I contented myself with two appealling cups by potters unknown to me — oddly, both named Reilly/Riley.

There’s a property of owls I call “Half-Dome Head.”  It’s a shape that’s noticeable in the profile of all owls, particularly the larger ones.  The Barred Owl to the right is exhibiting major Half-Dome Head.  If Half-Dome Head can be achieved when making owls in clay, the resulting effigies will be Especially Owly.

The name derives from the famous granitic dome formation, Half Dome, in Yosemite Valley, California, which bears an obvious resemblance to an owl’s head in profile.  The geologic Half Dome is forming largely by weathering: eons of sheet-exfoliation on the fragmented face of an exposed granodioritic batholith gave it the shape we see today.  (Appropriately, one of the most Half-Dome-Headed owls ever, the regal Great Gray Owl, is an uncommon resident of Yosemite Valley, see photo below: the color and texture even match).

In owls, the “Half-Dome Head” effect arises from the front of the Owl’s head (in other words its face, to use the technical term) being shaped like a radar dish, to be efficient at gathering sensory input — in other words, light and sound.  But take away the feathers and an owl’s cranium is shaped pretty much like a hawk’s, or even a chicken’s skull (check out these images).  An owl is after all a bird, albeit a fairly specialized one, so it’s built like a bird.  The forward-oriented flat face that we humans find so fascinating (probably for anthropocentric reasons) is due more to posture and feather-arrangement than underlying skeletal structure: the owl generally holds its bill slightly downward rather than forward like other birds.  This gives prominence to the distinctive “facial disc” — the specialized array of radar-dish-like plumage around an owl’s eyes and ears — and positions it so it functions optimally.

The owl’s Facial Disc is a precise specialization for nocturnal hunters who require every available bit of light and sound directed into their sensory apparatus to ensure the highest possible success rate while hunting.  Several features of the facial disc are noticeable: short flat-lying feathers sweep away from the eyes and “cheeks” so as not to impede forward vision; stiff vertically-arranged feathers edging the facial disc help funnel sound into the ear openings, which are asymetrically arranged on either side of the face behind the eye to create aural parallax (and are nowhere near the cranial tufts we commonly call “ears”); and rictal bristles (“whiskers”), which are specialized sensitive filamental feathers on either side of the gape (the flexible corners of the mouth which allow the beak to open and close), that enable the owl to perform preening and feeding activities — including the feeding of owlets — by feel, since their large eyes are immovable in the skull and so can’t focus efficiently at very close ranges.

But that’s just the flat front of the “Half-Dome”: the round back, the helmet-shaped fullness of feathers on the back of an owl’s head also transmits owliness to our perception.  This is also due to the owl’s skeletal configuration: the bird’s upright posture is possible because its skull is joined to a nearly vertical spine.  Most birds’ backs go off at a more or less right angle to their necks (think of a dove), somewhat shortening the curve at the back of the head.  But the feathers on the back of an owl’s head arc smoothly down to the back, which continues downward steeply.  The photo above shows Half-Dome head creating Owliness in an MLO (Moderately Large Owl) I’m currently working on for a client.

Photos: from top to bottom: IBO barred owl, A.Shock; Half Dome Yosemite, Carroll Ann Hodges, USGS; Great Gray owl, Canada (Sorry; don’t know who to credit this photo to); Three Star Owl “eared” owl effigy in progress, A.Shock.  And finally, a Gratuitous Cranky Owlet chillin’ with the Big Boys…

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.

And?  Then Sunday evening, a warm, calm, acacia-fragrant evening while it was still light, I looked down on the Nid from the upstairs window, and saw Fascinating Behavior.  The first was a definite look at a dark, fuzzy head with a now orange-yellow bill restlessly moving in and out of sight from the depths of the Nid.  This was very exciting.  Then nothing for several minutes — the Hen was away for quite a while on this outing.  It gave me a chance to study the inner edge of the far side of the Nid, and think how clean it was: no poop.  I realized I’d never seen a hummer carrying a white fecal sac away from a nest, like many songbirds do to keep their nests clean: food in, fecal sacs out.  I wondered if a nestling hummer produced a fecal sac that was just so small I’d never noticed.  Just then a gray fuzzy lumpish shape appeared over the rim: a second nestling!… but, no — it has no face?  What…? Then: SPLORTCH!  Like a jet of ‘baccy juice from the lips of a cartoon hillbilly, a tiny projectile squirt came shooting over the rim of the nest and arced towards the ground.  So that’s how it’s done!  No fecal sacs here for mom to cart away, just a butt-skywards and a quick squeeze, and business has been taken care of.

The second event was the Hen returning.  And, to my relief and fulfilled expectation, she perched on the edge of the nest and pointed her beak downward.  Just like in the nature films, two little heads rose up to meet her, and she poked her bill down one gullet and then the other, dispensing yummy liquid Gnat-in-Nectar stew to each Nidling in turn, the bigger one going first.

To the right is a close-up of an Anna’s hummingbird stamp on a Three Star Owl “Hummingbirds of Arizona” cylindrical vessel.  (Both photos: A.Shock)

No pictures of any of this excitement.  I’ll try, but I’ve decided to paper over the window until fledging.  It would be awful if our voyeurism, or the cats, who love to sit and “read the backyard newspaper” from this window, caused her to abandon the nest.  I’ll leave a flap to peek through, like an impromptu blind, and maybe before long I’ll manage to get a photo.  The best I can do is leave you with this link to someone else’s photo of exactly what I saw.