In 2022 I attended a sculpture workshop taught by Jeff Gottfried at the Bosque Art Center in Clifton, Texas. Jeff is a wonderful artist and a really good teacher. He’s particularly well known for his Western Art and portraiture. Here’s a link to his website: https://www.jeffgottfried.art/

Jeff suggested that for the workshop we bring in a number of photographs of a person we would like to try and depict. I decided to work on a bust of my Grandmother, Euline Stockton, in her later years, as she had an interesting face and I have quite a few photographs of her. My grandmother had a reputation within the family of being a bit of a battle-axe, but there was no one stronger. Her husband died when my mom was only 5 and her little brother Tommy was 3. This was in the middle of the Great Depression. My grandmother found work as a typist and took care of them and herself until she married my step-grandfather several years later. As a teenager, I remember arguing with her a lot, but she taught me so many life skills – gardening, crocheting, flower arranging, how to bake bread, how to make jelly – and in times when I feel like perhaps I’m not enough, I remember her strength and am inspired by it.

The workshop was a great experience from start to finish. The Bosque Art Center is a beautiful facility, actually quite comparable with those I have seen in much larger cities, and they offer so much to the community in terms of events, exhibitions and education. The workshop was supposed to be two days, but Jeff added an optional additional day at no cost so that no one would have to rush and hosted it at his own studio in Granbury. Afterwards they transported all the wet clay busts back to the art center and carefully dried them for a while. We returned in in a few weeks to apply glaze before the busts went into the kiln. I think everyone was very happy with their results.