Tear Bowl

TEAR BOWL I

The Inspiration

It’s a long row to hoe, as the story goes. Stop and starts. Tapping two steps backward, for every one step forward. When does it end? Will it ever end? Every day blending into the next in salty watershed. I nearly drowned. I thought I knew grief (lost loved ones), but no, apparently I had sampled only one slice of the sadness pie.

Grief has been a consistent companion now for over a year for reasons far grander than little old me. It’s brought me back to the time when I felt swallowed whole by grief several years ago. At that time, I didn’t have any understanding of how a person could be met with a loss in life that dragged them down a drain hole of grief for the rest of their lives. I just didn’t get it. It’s not my nature to become “stuck” in anything.

TEAR BOWL II

Trauma can make or break you. The choice is yours. I’ve known many who never recovered. They were completely broken by their childhood trauma, some gone by their own hand. I’ve been told by those “in the know” that I’ve experienced severe childhood trauma. That’s how it goes when one’s brother is a psychopath, as I mentioned in my post, Death Delivered by Police Sergeant. It took me years to come to terms, to heal. It took tremendous effort, hard work, and courage on my part.
Part of the healing process is grieving, once you’ve peeled enough of the onion layers away to land there. Wham bam! It hit me hard when it landed. I cried uncontrollably for months. I felt myself go down into a bottomless well of the deepest sadness I had ever experienced. It wouldn’t let up. It was constant, all day, all night without respite. I felt sucked down by an ocean undertow. This was when I realized how a person can end up spending the rest of their lives trapped in a well of grief.

TEAR BOWL III

I’ve always turned to creativity as an outlet, a way of life for me. You could even say that the process of creating brought me home to my true self and saved me. Creativity is a doorway leading one home to who one truly is and I don’t mean being an “artist”. No wonder society shuns or exploits artists of all types. You’re not supposed to find out who you truly are. It’s an enormous threat to those who control this “world”.
“Tear Bowl” is a very personal sculpture, one I created while grieving for my little girl inside, all that I experienced as a child but was unable to express in an environment of ongoing abuse. There are thirteen tears, all slightly different, meant to represent each month of a year in an ancient calendar. In total, it was just over two years to go through the grief process, but the first year nearly broke me, hence the focus on one year of my tears, collected in a bowl. The bowl represents me, the vessel that collected the tears as they fell.

TEAR BOWL IV

The Process

This miniature sculpture has been carved in African Blackwood and Brazilian Amber. Each amber tear is the size of an actual human tear. The African Blackwood bowl is approximately 1.25 inches in diameter and 1.50 inches high.

The dark part of the bowl is the heartwood, while the light brown is the outer sapwood. The sapwood is much softer to carve. The heartwood is extremely dense and hard. It is very difficult to carve and dulls tools quickly. Initial cuts into it are hard going, so I don’t start carving this type of wood that way. Instead, I begin shaping with these rifflers. When I had the overall shape very loosely roughed out, I marked where I wanted to remove material using a black sharpie. From this point, I used a small shallow straight gouge and these micro carving tools along with the rifflers to complete the form.
While I carved it, I kept testing it to make sure it would balance standing. I brought it to a point where it sits at an angle. The slightest touch will tip it over, causing the tears to spill out of the bowl. From this point, I refined the form using these detail riflers and needle files.

TEAR BOWL V

Often, I use a gouge or chisel as a scraper when refining. I’ll also flip it upside down and use the opposite side, depending on what I need to happen during carving. Using scrapers means using less sandpaper and allows for beginning with a finer grit than without the use of scrapers. I keep sanding with finer grits until I bring up a polish on the entire piece. Due to the nature of this wood, it will easily come up to a shine.
Carving each of those thirteen tears was another ball of ancient tree resin. I chipped a piece for each off a large piece of amber with a chisel using precarious, gentle hand pressure at the right angle. I used the same needle files mentioned above to refine the tear shape, holding the amber piece with two fingers, rotating it while I worked. Sandpapers were used to bring each up to a polish. I use wet/dry sandpapers and on the amber tears, I used them with water.
Carving each of those tears was far more labor intensive than the bowl itself. More patience that I can express in words was involved with each of them, especially since each is intentionally, slightly different in shape.
Every tear that falls is unique.

TEAR BOWL VI

_{All photos taken by Nine with a Pentax digital 35mm camera and 90mm Tamron macro lens.}