Halfland's Second Rock of Ages

A lichen mustache, a hint of deepened color in his cheeks,
and details taken away give us a rock that is also a presence.

Today, I'm presenting Halfland's second Rock of Ages. The first was shown back in 2013 in a post about Christine's! artist mother Rachel's penchant for drawing delightful faces on rocks. It said, "Rachel brings out the natural features present in a rock so that the personality seems fully alive."

Then somehow in 2020, I started "fleshing out" features on a stone (seen upper left in collage below) with glue. I kept adding layers on whenever I had excess glue from doing something else that didn't want to waste. I used tacky glue, matte medium, and wood glue in alternating layers for three years. A very long-term interstitial prop project.

I ended it with texture and filling in some of the definitions in the features that made it too obviously a face. By filling them in it did that Halfland thing, where something rides the edge of being two different things. A deliberate, and hopefully delightful, ambiguity.