...and yet there are always exceptions to the rule.

Don't get me wrong.  I do love this thing. 

But... there is only one possible thought, looking at this piece of sculpture:

"It's a dead turtle.  Right?"  (perhaps with the mental follow-up:  "What can possibly have inspired the fabrication of a candy-dish shaped like a dead turtle?"

I'm not a particularly sentimental parent, and, really, curbing the impulse to mock this thing is frankly beyond me.  My daughter's injured outrage, as viewer after viewer makes this "wrong" interpretation only intensifies the urge to laugh.

(It's supposed to be a rendition of a live hedgehog, curled, ah... cutely on its back)

But--I do love this thing.  There's only a narrow space of time when one can receive a gift like this from one's progeny, proffered in all earnestness. 

Until it gets knocked over and loses one of those spindly rigor mortis legs, it's a keeper.

New post up on William P. Reimann's website, with a click-through to the newest uploaded image. It's a drawing he made for me a few years back, done during the visit when I hassled him to produce individual drawings for each of his five grandchildren.  He did those... then made one for me as well.

<= Drawing of Kudus, dedicated to Katya

One of my greatest pleasures in webmastering my father's site is that I get to spend time looking at, and thinking about, his artwork and his creativity. 

Getting to take a fresh, close look at this particular drawing (which is, I believe, the only piece of art Dad has, to date, signed/dedicated to me personally) while I struggled to get a good photo allowed me a chance to bring some new thoughts forward today.

Time passes so quickly.

One of the (minor but enduring) regrets in my life is that I have seldom taken the time out to hassle/remind/NAG my Dad to produce personal works for myself and my children. This really is something I need to remind myself to do, particularly insofar as the kids are concerned.

It's so easy to forget that my children never knew my father prior to his retirement from teaching at Harvard. They never saw him at work on one of his monumentally scaled sculptures. That whole part of his life--forty years or fifty years--is something they can only know from stories.

He continues to do (in my opinion) amazing work and beautiful sculptures, but the exhausting, mind-bogglingly large pieces are no longer where his focus lies. So--it's up to me to share the stories, or to make sure that my kids know how much fun his and my own life have been, working as artists.

The updates to the Will Reimann website are for everyone, but at their heart, they are in a big way about making Dad knowable to his grandchildren.