Apprentice in Bronze Works

Dear friends -I need your help to learn a key new skill that will deepen the scope of my work and help me to make a greater overall contribution to the culture and occulture.

I have been given a rare opportunity to apprentice in bronze casting with award-winning international artist Leah Pollar. We are working together on a project involving seven major Tarot Sculptures - and I am consulting. I have been invited to join her up near Shanghai during the forging process and to make casts of one of my own peices under her tutelage - the peice is a parapegma (a sculpted board to count the days of a magical calendar - in this case the Faery Dog Calendar). So. I would like to raise funds to travel to China for 2 weeks, and forge three to five bronze statues. I then hope to go on to explore future possibilities working in bronze.

I feel strongly that this mysterious and powerful medium - metallurgy (the deepest roots of magic, axcording to Jake Stratton Kent)- may be suited to my artistic vision in ways beyond what even I can imagine at this time. I am a long-term thinker, who has up until now worked mostly in ephemeral media such as paper and digital. Perhaps now this is going to change? I feel powerfully compelled to contribute in a substantial and permanent way to the community of artists, magicians, and philosohers who are working at this time in history to envision paths beyond our current state of crisis. The great Ursula LeGuin charged us collectively with the mission to envision bright and hopeful futures - to help break the addiction we have to cynicism, dystopia, and despair. I am completely committed to this - in my art, teaching, and magic (most of which is offered for free to those who would benefit from it), I am working to craft a way for us to live the long term in the present: by making artful and magical calendars. Casting these in bronze gives my efforts a permanence that is suitable to their vision. Please help me apprentice to this craft so that I may empower all my ongoing contributions and forge them in a way that will last centuries!

I truly, truly value any support in this work- I cannot afford it on my own at this time - but I will be eternally grateful to anyone who chooses to help me achieve this, and I will sing your praises loudly - also just contact me and we can talk about how I might reciprocate energies directly - I don't want to subject this to a formula, but I will reciprocate!

In all events, I will document this process visually online in my social media and make it available for all to see - it should be an interesting spectacle! Please help me if you can. With gratitude;

-Peter