Cody Goodin - The artistic and spiritual journey of Cody Goodin

Hello out there my friends in blog land.  I hope you are out enjoying the weekend holiday.  I also wanted to take this time  to remember those who have suffered loss of any sort.  My thoughts are with you. Now for some works in progress.  You ever have one of those experiences where you see something that sort of inspires you?  Then without you really knowing it, it grabs you by the collar and shake the living art stuff out of ya?  Well, I think that has happened to me of late.  Recently I viewed a little documentary about an artist named John Frame .  He has a show in California. Anyway, as I was watching his little bio it struck me that this artist is living my dream life.  Wow!  What an awe inspiring thing for me.  It is hard to put into words.  But, it seemed to validate my dream in a way that was hard for me to convince myself of before.  Again, it is hard to put into words.  Needless to say I am really ja...

Wow!  I can not believe how much time flies by each month.  It seems like yesterday I had gone to Artistic Figures In Cloth in Columbus and now it is racing to the end of the month.  I wanted to post a project I did for the joint meeting of the Circle City Dollmakers of Indianapolis Indiana and the Rivercity Figurative Artists Guild. We usually meet halfway between the two cities.  This year we met at the Sherman House in Batesville Indiana.  It is a fun little German themed restaurant and Inn. Each year one of the clubs hosts a challenge for us all to make a figure based upon.  This years challenge was to create a doll based on the western zodiac signs.  My figure is based upon my rising sign of Aries. His head is polymer clay with antique glass cab eyes.  He sports a red fur mohawk.  His hands are poly clay as well.  His body is a cloth and wire armature construction.  His legs are made of willow branches and mounte...

Howdy to everyone out there in blog land.  I am back from my trip to Columbus to attend the Artistic Figures In Cloth art doll conference.  It was a blast and I really did learn some great new techniques from Susie McMahon who was my teacher.  She hails fro Tasmania Australia.  The class was a three day sculpting workshop and I learned how to use paper clay in a more efficient way.  Needless to say it was well worth it to me.  I am tired, but energized too.  Here is the figure I created. She is tentatively called "Petitioning Nature for Mercy" and is a paper clay head over stuffed armatured body built on top of a brick.  She has real twigs and decorative papers applied to create her skin and hair.  Then painted with acrylic paints and mediums.  I am trying to decide if I am going to offer this for the upcoming bricks along the journey auction or make another.  It may be hard to give this one up. Well, I am really...

Hello all of my friends out there in blog land.  I have finally broken through the creative dessert and found a small oasis of art doings.  Before I head off to AFIC (Artistic Figures In Cloth) later today, I wanted to post the finished figure.  This was made for a special exhibit challenging the participants to create a doll without a traditional means of support i.e. doll stand.  So, I created "It Came From Planet Claire". If you remember in my last post I gave you a sneak peek.  This piece was a true mixed media fantasy for me.  I started off with a polymer clay head I had made last fall.  I was in this mood to make a block head for some reason.  Well, now that I am interested in including a mid century sci fi theme in my work at this point I thought it made a great start.  I have a small collection of old vacuum tubes, so one of these was used for the top.  The body is a wrapped wire armature mounted so that I ...

Top of the morning to you all out there in blog land.  Sorry for the longish absence from posting.  It's been a busy April and no sign of slowing down until the middle of May.  So, to peak your curiosity hopefully, I am showing you a few snippets of what is on my work table right now. This first snap is of a few fun little projects for the upcoming studio art walk at the Essex Studios, where my home away from home is located.  The open house tour is May 6th and 7th from 6-11pm for those of you in the Cincinnati Ohio area. Here you can kind of see two figures from a series I call Personal Mojo's.  They are almost finished.  Just needs the final layers and embellishments.  Also, you can see a few little panels sculpts I am working on.  Those are still not done.  The last bits on this table are some little art doll pins I am making just for those little quickie sales.  They are based on a pin project my local doll did a year or so...

A slow uphill course but, I am still moving forward.  Yes, I am trying to get my creative mojo back.  Yet, I am making little discoveries along the way.  One is that I have a deep seated desire to work with fiber and textiles again.  So, I asked a dear friend of mine who is an outstanding art quilter and teacher, David Walker if he would tutor me on his method of making art quilts.  I am not interested in the traditional.  I never really do anything traditional.  But, I need a foundation on which to launch myself into the stratosphere of art again. I believe a lot of my ideas, imagery and stories will translate well into the art quilt medium.  Hopefully you all can follow me along on my journey.  So, many ideas, so little time to get them down.  But, I will pick one and start there.  Stay tuned for that. On another note, I have here a picture of some of the small works I have in progress. These are fun little things I like to...

Wow!  I can't believe it's been so long since I have posted new work.  But, honestly I haven't really created anything new up until this last week.  As I have told many of my artist friends.  I am going through what I call my mid life crisis in creativity.  As an artist, I have undergone many changes in direction and mediums throughout my artist career.  Once I even went a whole year without making art.  Cycles are a fickle thing sometimes.  Part of this is probably due to the fact that I produce lots of work when I am in the zone.  Suffice it to say, I am going through a creative and emotional house cleaning of sorts.  This can all be traced back, at least in my mind, to the battle with cancer last year.  One tends to go through a period where you question everything and realize you want to make everything count in some way. What I have been doing is teaching a little.  Last weekend I taught a class for the Gi...