HI Grizzly, thanks for the friend request...  My favorite medium is acrylic right now and I use a lot of joint compound, textured paint and medium to build texture in order to get the results in my paintings that you get from your framed sculpture.  I make all my own intricate stencils to help build the shape, sometimes I just wait for the medium to harden and then I carve the figures out of it.  My photos never seem to show all the texture and intircate detail.  I would love to work with copper and learn how to do some metalsmithing.  I use copper scraps in my art often.

I especially like your framed work, is this what you call the repousse?  I have tried raising copper...well, maybe not, I have etched designs on one side in order to raise the other side and then I sew the sheets on to my canvas,

About the movie Contact.  Brilliant and Jodie Foster is incredible as always.  so many messages of importance.  but I love most when she discovers her self- enforced confinement while on the ship and lets her self free..Calm comes over her and all fear is banished.  then.... "I didn't know, so beautiful, so beautiful...they should have sent a poet!"   that was the most amazing scene...they barely show what she is looking at but you just know because she is so good at expressing it.

Kara