Surprise Visitor

This semester I'm taking a Sculpture class in addition to ceramics.  There is a cemetery up the road where I ride my bike and sometimes I'm able to get big chunks of wood when they do landscaping and clear out old dead (of course, it's a cemetery) trees.

I was strongly influenced by El Anatsui and his show here in Austin.

Do a Google Images on his name and you'll be impressed incredible size and beauty of the work he does. The part that caught my eye was his wood carvings:

At the beginning of the semester I was given a scrap of wood to practice on and I made this little box. Susan collected some of our stuff to put in it but told me she thought the holes in the wood were what she called "worm holes" and were actually made by worms. Oh sure. Like worms can get in hard wood. She warned me not to used any junk recycled wood right away, to let any critters move out of it before using it.  Oh sure...

When I brought my three wood guys home I set them up on a shelf and the next morning told Susan to look at them and see what she thought.  She walked right up to them and immediately said "What is that sticking out of the head?" I picked it up and looked at it.  ????? IT MOVED!!!

I'm not sure if Susan was madder at me for ignoring her about critters in the wood or for not taking a picture of the worm sticking out before I pulled it out and threw it outside. At least you can see where it was.