John Constable produced most of his ‘Cloud Studies’ between 1820-22 My old friend Anthony Bevilacqua and I share an affection for the paintings of John Constable, particularly his Cloud Studies and other oil sketches. I have yet to see any of these in person and hadn’t looked at them in a while until Anthony sent […]
Category Archives: aesthetics
Sand Patterns 8
An Argument for Simplicity
As artisans we’re often compelled to make things that last, for obvious reasons. If the thing is functional we don’t want out efforts to be wasted; we want the functionality to remain in tact over time, hopefully adding to a thing’s value. If a thing is purely aesthetic, we want its beauty and meaning to […]
Sand Patterns 7
Accidental Seascapes #1 & #2
Accidental Seascapes #1 and #2, 45″ x 11.5″ each, plywood, WD-40, cement-all. Removing the forms from my Deep Deck mold, I was surprised and delighted to find two accidental seascapes emerge on the plywood sides that were in contact with the curing concrete. I sprayed the boards with WD-40 as a release agent before making […]
“Stir thy lethargy!”
My great-grandfather, Howard Heinkel, at Brigantine, c 1928 (still from home movie). I’m lucky to have known my great-grandfather, Howard Heinkel, an extremely energetic Philadelphia doctor of German ancestry who lived to be a healthy, cogent 96. Gramps built one of the first houses on the island of Brigantine on the Jersey Shore, where he […]
A Fish Story
Dr Constable pilots Belle 76 to Weakfish Thoroughfare, Brigantine Bay, 1976. My first apprenticeship was at the helm of a Boston Whaler, hunting for flounder and weakfish in the back bays of South Jersey with my dad in the summers of the late 1970s. I could pilot a boat years before I had my driver’s […]