Again - More Totems!

I got a call today from Sally at Idaho Black Bear Rehab.  She wanted to thank me for the check I sent (proceeds from sales at the recent Studio Tour) and we chatted for quite a while.  She told me how timely my donation was as she was wondering how she was going to buy food for the cubs through November.  I am so happy to help and just wish I could do more.

Her call motivated me to really work on items for the Holiday Market, in hopes of raising more money for the bears.  Here are the most recent additions to my "inventory."  I am really enjoying making these little totems and I hope they'll sell reasonably well.  Of course pricing will be very important, so I think I'll consult a few friends on that issue.

For something a little different, I embellished the little bear with some beads - African turquoise (which has a subdued greenish tint), white Buffalo turquoise, and turquoise colored glass seed beads.  I know the beads lend a Native American flavor, while the spiral I painted on the rock is a Celtic image.  But I think it's OK - yet another application of my artistic license (which I have framed on my studio wall - ha ha).

Then I turned to the rabbits.  My intent was to make a small group of rabbits standing in a circle on the flat dark rock.  I made the first rabbit pretty much as small as I could - it's about 1 1/2" tall - but it was still too big to have more than one on the rock.  So I abandoned that idea for another day.  It was a hoot "dressing" him in polymer clay Druid garb.  The cloak is very thin so that I could drape it and I was a little worried about how fragile it would be.  As it turned out, it's somewhat flexible so not as fragile as it would be if it were brittle.  But it's a fragile piece, nonetheless.  After trying him on the flat dark rock, I discovered that he looked better on a light rock, so I glued a flourite point on a piece of river-rounded quartz and added the rabbit in a position of delighted discovery!

A program I saw a while ago on the "star disk," a beautiful artifact of Celtic origin, inspired the final piece - the rabbit on the flat, dark rock.  In the piece, the rock loosely - very loosely - represents the star disk with painted bronze spirals and glued on topaz colored crystals.  The little rabbit is studying the disk and apparently finds meaning in the portion she's about to touch.