A sculpture redone...

Found this sculpture some time ago leaning against the wall in the garage. It was never mounted to a base and was in fairly rough shape.  It's carved out of a fairly soft red wood (might be cedar.) There is a through-and-through opening in the stomach and in a smaller one the left knee.

I noticed there was a hole drilled on the bottom "shelf" of the "stomach window" near the front of the sculpture. Looking at my dad's sketches, it probably had a bird (wood or metal) mounted inside the stomach hole that would have been mounted on a short peg. Either the bird broke, or he never finished it. So I filled in the post hole, re-sanded the cracking sculpture, re-stained it and mounted it to a wood base. Since an empty space can be symbolic of loss, I guess it's appropriate.

 This one is obviously part of a series of sculptures of carved women... both are minimally carved on the back.

The new one (I call her Red Woman) is a cool sculpture with a little pinched face that my friend Roger says reminds him of the work of Eldon Danhausen, a sculptor who worked during the same time period. There is a similarity between some of my dad's work and his..

Here is Eldon's on the left with dad's on the right...though Eldon's appears cast, and Dad's are welded.

And they both did work with exposed internal features on figures...

One of dad's medieval physician autopsy figures at left, and Eldon's figure with raised arms (and exposed ribcage) above on right. (Image courtesy Roger)

Word count wise, not much of a blog, I know, but all the drilling and sanding and staining sucked up most of my energy. But was happy to bring the red woman back to life and wanted to put her (tiny) face out there.