Ikons, Icons, Ex Voto, Tamata by Michael W. Moses

I have to tell you that I have not been getting much done in the way of pottery the last few weeks or blog posts.  I have been doing everything but pottery.  I have been working on a prop piece pseudo ikon of Cthulhu that will be used in some still life faux artifact art photographs.

Santa Sofia

I have been putting some of my vintage 1990's art ikons on Etsy to sell, and I have been doing a bit of stuff for South Coast Antiques. Mainly preping stuff for sell, researching, and tagging items. We have picked up a number of great items.  As I was saying I have been doing everything but pottery.  Maybe this week I will be able to get a few pieces painted.

As for my ikons I have been doing them for many years.  I did my first one which was a 1/12 inch scale miniature dollhouse sized one,  when I was 13. It has two doors and a small drawer with a silver handle.  I still have it somewhere.  I used to love doing miniatures.  I created everything that one could imagine. Even a small collection of fired miniature pottery I made back in the early 1980's.

Billy the Kid

Our Darling Girl

I recently came across some images that I took of a few years back of my ikons that I created in the mid 1990's.  I was living in Northern New Mexico at the time in a small town called Regina.  Regina was a magical place that filled my senses with art and creativity.  I loved it there but there was just no way for me to make a real living there so after a number of years there I had to give up and head back East and do an old fashioned job.  Well, I want go into that right now for fear that that might take a bit of the artistic integrity away from this blog.

Key to the Kingdom

My icons are entirely hand made. I very carefully choose the wood. Preferring aged and weathered and antique wood that I could either use as is or that I could manipulate to give the wood a bit more of an aged or appropriate look.  I then hand cut the wood using only hand tools and hand sanded and rubbed the wood to a beautiful finish.

My metal covers were usually made of sheet aluminum and in some cases sterling silver.  I preferred the sterling, but it just got to cost prohibitive over the years and ended up with my working in mainly the aluminum.  Which is good because it does not tarnish like silver. It stays about the same.

Saint Joan

Some of my Icons had nothing more that a small print underneath, some antique tin type photographs, and some I did detailed painting.

Many of them are further embellished with glass beads, real pearls, real stones, faux stones, translucent enamel paints, and of course gold leaf.

My subject matter has been everything from images of nameless unknown Saints to street kids.  Many of these Ikons are not really Icons in the traditional sense. Some might even be considered ex voto or tamata.  For the most part I just consider them art.

Defender of the Faith

The images posted here are images of ones that I sold back in the 1990's.  I did not think about taking photographs of these pieces until I had sold a fairly large number of them.  So I really do not have many images of my ikons.

Our Lady of Sorrow