This was my second scene, completed back in the mid-90’s. Unfortunately, I only have three photos of it and they are basically the same. Here’s a very valuable tip…….TAKE LOTS OF PHOTOS OF YOUR PIECES!! Especially now that we are in the digital age where we can store gobs of photos on our computers at almost no cost. I sure wish I had done that with this one but it’s too late now.
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You can see lots of details in this one that appear in other pieces that I completed later on. I wanted to do a scene of a Sheriff playing checkers with his prisoner through the bars of the cell. The jailbird’s hand reaching through to make his next move ties both sides of the assemblage together. The positions of the two players draw you directly to the action taking place on the checkerboard which brings us to the title. I always try to make the titles of any of my carvings reflect just who the character is or what the scene is supposed to represent. In this case I could have said “Sheriff and Jailbird Playing Checkers” but that has no real ring to it. After a lot of thought I remembered the movie “Five Easy Pieces” starring Jack Nicholson. Now it had nothing to do with checkers but it was a very funny film and that title was just what I was looking for to make the scene come alive. It really doesn’t show up in the photos but if you could look directly down at the checkerboard you’d see that the jailbird is in the process of taking “five easy pieces” from the Sheriff to win the game.
Comments welcome.
