looking at sculpture

Last summer on the Isle of Islay, I found lots of these carved grave-slabs. Warriors, lords/lairds, men-at-arms, men who in death, were carved with the necessary weaponry in their hands.
Some of the carvings have weathered, some are quite crudely worked. Others are exquisitely carved.

I'm not a 3D artist; I work on a flat surface. But I am intrigued by how sculptors work, and fascinated by their skills.
This is more of a relief carving, than a 3D, in the round, sculpture. But in my head, it's sculpture.
Currently on in Leeds, at the Henry Moore Institute is an exhibition by Sarah Lucas, one of the famous YBA's. The exhibition is called 'Ordinary Things', and Lucas has created sculpture out of everyday materials; tights, wire, shredded newspaper, wood, plaster bandage, concrete.
The concrete casts of vegetables are lovely. Her uses of wooden posts (what look like fence posts in fact!) to mount up smaller wood, and cast sculptures, is simple and effective. And raises ordinary-ness of everyday materials into art.
Some of her work is less effective for me; I didn't like the 'NUD' series, made from stuffed tights. But these do have a fleshy realism; as though limbs or intestines. A bit stomach-churning.

And in Leeds, I collected the tickets to see Patti Smith! H'ray!

shinglenest

Oil on canvas; a painting from 2008.
From one of my visits to Luce Bay up in Scotland. 
A late night walk along the shingle beach, bouncing over the scrunchy kelp and almost stepping into a scrape nest of three eggs.
Oystercatchers like clockwork toys, running to avoid the waves.
The boom of the sea on the shore; the undertow of the pebbles. The cries of the seabirds.
The smell of the beach; salt; kelp; putrefaction.
Something mysterious beneath the shingle.
Layers.