Kitsune (Foxes) Always Keep Their Promises

I got a few hours of work in at the studio Friday afternoon. I worked on the new piece, a torso, and finished the shoulders and neck and started building the arms. I'm coil-building the arms downward, which is a new thing for me and which turns out is quite difficult in the beginning. I'm sort of getting the hang of it now, though.

The piece is very va-va-voom, a torso corsetted into an extreme hourglass shape with a tiny wasp waist and very large breasts. I wavered for awhile between making it into another calavera piece and putting a skull on or making it into a fox-headed woman, an homage to the Japanese shape-shifting foxes of legend.

One of my favorite Japanese fox stories is about Kuzunoha, a fox who disguises herself as a woman so that she can marry the man who saves her from a hunter.  In the prints I've seen of her, she's always a woman who casts the shadow of a fox.

The story goes that Kazunoha and her husband have a child, Doji, who is brilliant and strange. (He catches insects and small animals and eats them, which understandably worries his mother as she thinks she's passed on her animal nature to him.) One day Doji catches sight of his mother's fox tail, revealing her true nature and forcing her to leave him and his father. Kazunoha writes a poem on the sliding paper door of their home, beginning by holding the calligraphy brush in her hand but, as her hands change back into paws, finishing the poem with the brush in her mouth. She cannot be persuaded to return to her human family in the end, but she does bestow upon Doji a book that allows him to communicate with animals.

The calavera vs. fox decision was dependent on whether or not I could sculpt a fox head. Before I started building the new piece, I tried to sculpt a fox head and failed. I went and looked at a bunch of pictures of foxes online and printed out six or seven of them and studied them for awhile. I tried again and failed. I tried to "sketch" a small one in clay (to get the proportions right) and failed at that, so I pinned the fox pictures up on my corkboard and started the new piece from the hips up.

After working for a bit, David and I met up with some friends, Kahori, Aki, and Kai, and had dinner at Thai Vegan. Kahori and Aki are living in Boston now, but they decided to visit Albuquerque this week and so we had a chance to meet up. We sat for three hours over a huge dinner and chatted about travel and such. Very fun.


On Saturday, we got up a bit early and got ready to leave the house by 9:30. Dave had a clarinet lesson at 10:00 and I wanted him to drop me off at the studio on the way, but I wanted to stop for coffee first. Starbucks was so busy that I ended up having to take Dave to his lesson. I dropped him off and then drove around for a bit drinking my half-caf soy mocha and listening to Fleetwood Mac. I finally headed to the studio where I chatted with Paul and worked on the sculpture a bit, adding to the arms.

After I picked up Dave, we went by Nosh for blunch (breakfast/lunch). I had a sandwich, roast beef with coleslaw on rye, and a side of onion rings. Dave had a tempeh ruben (only in Nob Hill) with coleslaw. Then we went back to the studio and I went back to working on my piece.

When it came time to decide, I thought I'd attempt one more fox head and, if it failed, I would default to the calavera. I spent several hours on the attempt, only pausing to take a walk with Dave, Judi, and Crunch in the morning, then to help Dave while he threw a base for a future sculpture for me, then to take Crunch for his evening walk. I made the muzzle three times. I put on ears and tore them off, put them on and tore them off again, put them on again.

Judi came out and sat and she and Dave made fun of my chaotic workspace, so I took a picture to document it:


Doesn't seem that bad to me--? The sculpture is wrapped in white plastic in the center of the photo. On the right is the bag of red clay I'm working from and my coffee. On the left are pictures of foxes and a Vogue magazine open to the picture of a model that I was using to gauge relative arm length. Scattered all around are the tools I'm using as I work, brushes, my spray bottle, a cup filled with water that I use to dip my sponges in, a container of slip, and so on.  I mean, there is a method to my madness, I swear!