Oliver and The Pod

 

This is Oliver. He had a broken leg that I glued back into place. He wasn't glazed except for some of the black copper oxide in the groves around his shoulders. And he looked bad. But I sort of liked him anyway. Susan said I needed to do something about the fact that the glue job on his leg showed up, didn't really like that I had glued him to the base piece of wood, said the pod was too dark, and he looked too ghost-like. I really hate it when she's right.

So we attacked him with acrylic paint, trying to disguise the leg fix and make the pod less dominant by putting some grey areas on him. It just wasn't working well and all of the sudden she accidentally made a drip on the front. That I really didn't like - I told her drip looked "high school" and I wasn't happy because once paint has settled on an unglazed surface there is no way to get it off.  She said that when a quilter is making a quilt and one color is just too dominant that means the quilter needs to add more of that color. So she made more drips on Oliver and now he looks pretty darn good.  Did I mention that I really hate it when she's right?

 

The pod in Oliver's belly comes from the Turtle Pond. Below is the sequence of how the pods develop. At the end, after the flower petals drop off, the pale green pod keeps growing larger until it pops open with the new little pod seeds in it.