The intent of this very minimalist form is to highlight the beauty of the wood while showing the “Hard-Hearted Hannah, the vamp of Savannah" personality of the model. This piece is deceptive. Exotic cocobolo wood is to my eye the most wonderfully colored and grained piece of all the pieces. A sculptor friend of mine who lives in Belize gave me this piece of wood from his island. It was a rough cut, charcoal-appearing, stick-like thing, but when I began to shape it the wood was spectacular.
As you can see from my other female figures, many are nudes with breasts of all shapes and sizes. I tell my wife, Pat, that this adds movement and flow, but I don't think she's convinced. Anyway, for this piece, I, of course, wanted flow and movement, but wanted to show-off the wood to its best advantage. In working to show-off the wood by slowly removing it so the grain flowed, Hard-Hearted Hannah was born.
She's mounted on a wonderfully curved base of Burl from a Buckeye root to contrast the beauty of these two woods.
