Next: Angel of the Sand

When the darkness creates a desolation, when you think back on yesterday's failure, when your confidence is shaking, when you worry about your important person, light him and tell him about your concern. He can stay by your bed, listen to you, give you comforting light and invite you into easy and sweet dreams. On a cool autumn day, when you were looking up at the trees of date plum, holding your mother's hand... When you were stepping on the fresh soft snow yard and creating your own foot prints in this world... When you were scared by a summer thunder storm, but holding your shivering puppy telling her she is OK... When you felt happy running around the field full of colorful flowers, even though you don't know any names of them... Now you realize that those moments are in you and there are many of them. He can watch you all night long, while you are sleeping. He makes sure you could keep all those beautiful moments...

The original stone was a triangle shape and one side was flat. Somehow an idea of owl came to me, even though I've never seen an owl in person. I knew it is a symbol of knowledge, and learning etc. in Japan. I saw many owl design items like a little key chain, owl pattern clothes/bags etc., but always they were illustrations drawn by simple lines.

The first thing I did was to Google owl photos. Looking at many photos of many kinds of owls from many angles helped me to know about their shape. I could get an image of this bird, which would be my image probably. The other information like where they live, how they spend their time, what kind of traits they have helps me to create "my owl image".  Even when I make an abstract or deformed shape of some animal, I definitely want to know its real shape and status.

Sculpture is 3 dimensional art. When I think about it mathematically, it is a huge amount of data. If I take a photo for every degree around it, I need to take 360 photos ( to make it simple, let's regard that one degree is the minimum unit !). And if I look at the object from one degree higher than the hight I took 360 photos, looking down on it, I need to take 360 photos again, and I need to repeat it until I look down it from the top of it....... Of course I don't think in that way when I make a design and when I am carving. But often it is a challenge to make a sculpture piece which I can be satisfied with from any angle.

I think the size of a sculpture could be an important factor for its design and its stone. This owl piece is small and I like it in that size. If it were 2 ft high, which could be a actual large owl size, I don't think the sculpture piece would look cute. I think any sculpture design has its best size, or some size range, which is usually narrow.

Also the place the sculpture will be displayed could affect to its design, or it should be in proportion. A great example would be "David" by Michelangelo, one of the greatest and most beautiful sculptures in the world. Even though it is such an accurate expression of a human body anatomically, the ratio of his head and upper body is larger than the lower body. However it is said that the statue was made to be installed on a high pedestal, so that its balance looked the best when the people look up at it from a lower position.

The back side of this owl piece is flat. The original stone had the area where the stone had been cracked naturally by a blade's cut from the both sides. A stone surface cracked without using a cutting tool has special beauty. There are many crystals you can see. Such a natural surface can't be created artificially. It is just like you break a large piece of chocolate into two and the surface comes out as rough. The cracked surface is very different from a surface cut by knife. So I left that part at the back of the piece.

An owl is a pet who delivers mail even without an address in Harry Potter. I think that "Yellow Guardian" would deliver a peaceful night on a night table.