Have we reached peak New York Times?

[mme_hardy]

Reprinted in full, minus image.

The Chicest Sticks

Long before the forager-artist Katie Ridley Murphy began sculpting sticks from porcelain, she sketched them from her own Atlanta backyard — and sold the resultant works as original drawings and prints. And each piece, regardless of the medium, was modeled after a real stick she found in nature.

Her mesmerizingly delicate work is inspired by, appropriately, her twin children — when they were 2, Murphy began enlisting their help to pick up the little sticks, which she would study and draw at home as the children swirled around her, playing. It was her calm in the midst of their beautiful storm. Her move from printmaking to the pottery studio took place about a year ago. And most of the sticks she seeks out these days, now that her children are 6, are white ones from nearby Arabia Mountain — where they sit atop the large granite rock face, and are naturally bleached by the sun.

At home, Murphy painstakingly recreates the shape and heft — as well as every nook and cranny — of each specimen, forming the pieces by hand, and adding about 20 percent to their size since they tend to shrink when fired in the kiln. The finer details come next, courtesy of a steady hand and an X-Acto knife — and Murphy’s grandmother’s old sewing needles. Each piece takes anywhere from eight to 28 hours to create; in the above slideshow, she shares her process.

Katie Ridley Murphy’s sculptures, $500-$2,500, are available at tenthousandthingsnyc.com.

Comments

[caulkhead]

I don't have children myself, much less two-year old twins, but I would love to hear the response of those who do to the phrase "Her calm in the middle of their beautiful storm".

[recessional]

Depends on the parent. I know quite a lot - especially in arts and music circles - who would have composed that sentence themselves. (And in fact thinking of it in that sense is part of their personal strategy for not drowning their children in the nearby swamp.)

[thistleingrey]

Yep--bubble space is another name for it, which I was interested to find my kid's preschool teachers actually teaching to the kids. (Good job, teachers.)

[recessional]

For me the calm-in-middle-of-beautiful-storm PERSONALLY it is excessively twee and would interfere with my attempts to maintain the actual mindstate (I would have to find a different metaphor), but I grew up among musicians, bless them (and me, as I am kind of them) and I know about twelve people who'd use that wording sincerely and benefit greatly from it.

So, you know. Whatever works and makes you love and bond with your kids, and not drown them in the swamp.

[thistleingrey]

Absolutely. (Weather storms can be beautiful. The other kind, for me, not so much.)

[legionseagle]

It's two days after the anniversary of the Penlee lifeboat disaster and less than two weeks after most of the landmarks of my childhood were either submerged or swept away by Storm Desmond, so while I can appreciate -- from a suitable distance and under cover -- the sheer aesthetic impressiveness of extreme weather, it's not a metaphor that's doing a lot for me at the moment on any level.

[thistleingrey]

Completely understandable.

[legionseagle]

"George. Don't do that."

[sophia_helix]

Sitting next to my 2 year old as he sprinkled cracker crumbs on the floor and shrieked "Mama, yook!", I laughed. Once I took 15 minutes to draw and color a World Series bracket and he spent the whole time clinging to my leg crying for me. It was not particularly beautiful.

[legionseagle]

Nor are storms beautiful, when one is out in the open sea and fear one is about to lose vessel and crew alike, lose those who trusted to you to bring them safe to port and there is nothing you can do. A facile, oblivious, comfortable, callous metaphor.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

One of the things I found with toddler twins was that they would at least occasionally keep each other amused and out of my hair. Of course they can also get into more trouble (e.g., one twin opening door as other twin puts hand in hinge -- fortunately this never happened to mine, but I had nightmares that it was going to, and I think it almost did once or twice). So they were AT TIMES a bit less trouble than a clingy singleton would be, but it wasn't anything one could count on.