This is the finished Walking Stick for my 3D Art class during Summer Semester. I am just now getting the photos together. The story about this project is long... but Ill try to be concise: The day I moved up the hill in Springville just off of East Center street, I looked up the mountain and pointed to a place that was actually the hiding place for a geocache. I wanted to go way up the hill. While I unpacked, my ( now ex-) husband took off and explored the hillside. He came back, tired, and said that there was nothing up there worth seeing and that he hated hiking. Not long after that he started dating other women... and told me he hated anything that took effort, including marriage ----- and left me. I felt worthless, unloved, betrayed and sick of men. I went back to therapy for nine months. During one visit with my therapist I told her that I have abandoned who I really am. She suggested I find myself and begin doing all the things I love. She told me to Pay Attention to where your heart leads you. Go and do those things... Go find out who you really are! The hike up the mountain was what I wanted to do more than anything at that time. I was too weak to do it! So I started carrying my art supplies on my back and hiking up the mountain until I was strong enough to make the hike. It was September 2nd, 2013, after I had moved away from that house and had started school at UVU that I finally climbed the mountain... I found this walking stick, in the dark, and it helped keep me from falling off a cliff. What I thought was a shadow across the trail, was actually a cliff face. I had picked up this stick which had been a branch of an Oak Tree on the mountain near the Wintering Elk Cache - Geocache. My judgment was poor. I hadnt planned on being out after dark. I was caught in a rainstorm, thunder and lightning striking the ground. I was pretty scared. The thought came to me to use the stick to check the stability of the trail. I poked it into that shadow and discovered the edge of the cliff. The stick helped me several times, get down the mountain. The last 20 feet of the hike to my car, the stick broke off about 12 from the bottom. This summer, my professor encouraged me to complete a project made from found items that had special meaning to me. He suggested using wire sculpture ( to remind me of my struggle with wire ), and other found items that I could use to encourage me as I go forward and finish my degree... I restored the end of the stick by finding another branch from the same trail that had also been hit by lightning. It was hard to find. I tried many branches until I found one that was exactly the right width and color to match my stick. I chiseled out both ends and then spliced them together. There is a ton of wood glue between them to hold them together. To hide the spliced wood and all that shiny glue, I had to cover it with something! That part of the walking stick, which had once been full of dry rot is now stronger than the rest of the entire stick, and an interesting conversation piece! I covered the splice with dragon scale leather pieces, and wired it. I smeared charcoal on the leather to give it an aged and burned look to match the rest of the stick. I added stones from the trail that looked pink at night, and shined in the lightning. These pink stones are Pink Quartzite and are all over the Wasatch Mountain Range. In the rain their true color is exposed. I chose the shale from the mountain because I had slipped in it and cut myself. It is sharp, loose and dangerous. I used these sharp jagged pieces of shale to fill in the top of the walking stick where it had burned out by lightning. The Amethyst stones came from trips to AZ, hiking with Taylor and discovering Rock Shops along the way... He let me use those stones in my piece. The Emeralds are my birthstone. I wanted something that would represent healing and becoming reborn. Hiking is bringing me back to life. I am finding my true self and so I wanted to fill the cracks in the stick with little rocks and wanted emeralds. I have never been to Columbia, but I live near Columbia Lane in Provo. One day, as I waited for the green light on Columbia Lane, the thought came to me to search for emeralds - rough, just tumbled out of the mines of Columbia. I found the stones I used in the walking stick on Ebay from a seller in Columbia, South America. I love that part of the stick. Each of the stones fit perfectly in their own places and I carefully glued them in. The copper wire is to remind me that I can do amazing things with wire, even though it was one of the toughest parts of 3D art class! The color reminds me of my hair, as well as the electrical history of the walking stick! Anyway, now the final touch, was adding faux eagle feathers to the stick. I wanted to remind myself of the day Taylor and I watched in wonder as two eagles flew from the mouth of the canyon where I had climbed down that scary night in a lightning storm... I love this walking stick. I will never use it as a walking stick again, it is too heavy, too fragile and is now an art piece.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 01:52:00 +0000
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