Making Faces

Self portrait contour in baling wire

Talk about not being able to erase . . . . well, I was able to rebend, but you can only do that so many times with metal before it breaks on you.  Unless you heat the metal with a torch, I think it's called annealing, to relax it enough to bend again.  Kind of like working out, I guess.  The warmer you are, the more flexible you can be. 
Dan Dwyer and I did a collaboration between his class (jewelry and small sculpture) and mine (drawing and painting) at the beginning of the year (maybe ten years ago?).  I know, many of you think I've barely aged . . . well, that's the power of art.  Anyway, we hung them at the Gavilan show--there must have been a couple of hundred of these--one for each student in our classes.  Each so similar yet very different from each other. I also hung some pen and ink drawings that came from the process of creating the wire drawings, and some colored pencil drawings as well.  I like the possibilities of sustained metaphor in a project--how far can you push an idea.
I can't help but wonder if my obsession with drawing faces is contagious to any of my students.  Wonder if they continue to look in mirrors to call upon their ever-present, and hopefully ever-willing, subjects.  Some days my face is less than willing to be drawn.  But maybe that reluctance only comes with age.