Apple Rain Gazette
ISSUE No. 2 – September 2026
the clay, the dog and the long way around
This morning I started working very early.
I had a Fox Terrier on my table, and I was working on the final details when I suddenly felt dizzy. Nothing dramatic, but enough to make me stop and pay attention.
I have learned that there are moments when my body notices something before my brain does.
I looked at the sculpture and realized I was working mechanically.
And that is a problem.
A sculpture can be technically correct and still be completely wrong.
My work has never been about making technically perfect dog sculptures. There are flaws in them. There are things I could probably refine forever if I wanted to. But there is one thing I care about much more than technical perfection: the sculpture has to feel alive.
And the only way the sculpture gets any life is if I have some life to put into it.
So I stopped.
I went for coffee. I drove around for a while. I spent some time outside. I looked at the mountains, the fields, absolutely nothing in particular. Eventually I came back to myself a little.
And then I thought: perhaps this is what I should write about this month.
Not because I had planned to.
Just because this is where I am.
Fourteen Years Later, I Am Still Figuring It Out
I have been making dog sculptures for fourteen years now. Fourteen years is a long time to do something.
Long enough that you might expect me to have arrived somewhere.
I haven’t.
Or perhaps I should say that I don’t really believe in arriving.
I have always had a slightly complicated relationship with repetition. I get bored. Quickly.
If I do the same thing over and over again, eventually my brain starts looking for an escape route.
That is probably not the worst characteristic for an artist to have.
Over the years, I have changed finishes, firing techniques, sizes, approaches, materials, and the way I work with different breeds. I keep exploring because I need to. I need to understand what else is possible.
And lately I have been looking at breeds from groups I haven’t explored very much, as well as returning to breeds I have only made once or twice.
Every breed changes the question.
A dog is not simply a photograph that I translate into clay.
Different breeds have different structures, different temperaments, different ways of moving and standing and occupying space. Some have a particular quality that seems to ask for one kind of finish. Others suddenly make sense in a different size or technique.
Sometimes I discover something about the breed.
Sometimes I discover something about myself.
Usually it is both.
That is one of the things I still love about sculpture after all these years. I don’t want to know exactly what I am going to get before I start.
And perhaps that is why I haven’t really “mastered” it in the way people sometimes imagine an artist should after fourteen years.
I am still curious.
I Have Also been looking backwards
Recently I was looking at some of the sculptures I made in 2012, and some of the earlier years.
Technically, the difference is enormous.
I know much more now. My sculptures are more accurate, more professional, more controlled.
And yet…
I miss something.
The early pieces had a kind of naivety that I find incredibly charming now.
The clay I was using at the beginning was terrible. Truly terrible. It was self-drying clay, and it seemed to have its own ideas about what it wanted to become. Things collapsed. Things cracked. Things changed shape.
Sometimes I think the clay was basically co-authoring the sculptures.
They were horrible and gorgeous at the same time.
And people loved them.
Those first sculptures travelled all over the world. People looked at them and saw something in them that had nothing to do with technical perfection.
They were childlike, but they were also serious. There was something alive in them.
Fourteen years later, I have gained a lot of skill.
But I don’t want skill to become the thing that kills the life in the work.
So I am trying to bring some of that naivety back.
Raku helps with this. It gives me permission to simplify. It lets the firing process become part of the artwork instead of trying to control every little thing myself.
And I think I need that reminder.
Because I never want Apple Rain to become too serious.
I don’t want to make “just another dog figurine.”
There are millions of beautiful dog artists and beautiful dog collectibles in the world. I don’t need to become one more object sitting on a shelf because somebody happened to like dogs.
I want someone to look at one of my sculptures and really want that one.
Even if it is the only Apple Rain piece they ever own.
In fact, I don’t think I would want to be in everybody’s collection. If something becomes too easily available, some of the magic disappears.
I want my sculptures to remain a little bit personal.
A little bit unexpected.
Something that you find and think, “Yes. That one.”
And apparently, fourteen years in, I am still trying to figure out exactly how to make that happen.
Which is probably a good thing.
I’d be curious to hear from you, as a viewer, maybe even as a collector of my work, what do you think? Maybe you have outsiders ideas or takes I can reflect on.
A Full Cicrle
Earlier this year, something happened that I still find rather extraordinary.
The Giant Schnauzer Club of America contacted me and asked me to create five special sculptures to be used as trophies for a new award.
Now, if you know me, you will understand why this was not exactly a random commission.
The Giant Schnauzer was the beginning of everything.
Her name was Wendy.
She came to live with me when I was about eleven years old, a tiny puppy who somehow managed to rearrange the entire architecture of my life.
I have often joked that the only reason I wanted to go to school was because Wendy was waiting for me at home.
And when I was homeschooled, the only reason I wanted to finish my homework was because finishing meant I could go and be with her.
She gave me reasons to do things.
She gave shape to my days.
If I had a word for it today, I might say she was my emotional support dog long before I had any language for that.
I honestly don’t know who I would have become without her.
From Wendy onwards, my life slowly took the shape it has now.
Dogs became my world. I became involved with the breed world. I eventually began making sculptures. And somehow, fourteen years later, I found myself being asked by the breed club itself to make sculptures for one of its awards.
The funny thing is that I never approached the club.
They approached me.
Years ago, I made a lot of Schnauzers, including many Giant Schnauzers, and quite a few Giant Schnauzer breeders became collectors of my work. They had seen what I was doing and knew how connected I was to the breed.
I hadn’t been making many Giant Schnauzers recently.
And then suddenly this happened.
There was something about it that felt much bigger than a commission.
It felt like life had quietly walked around the block and come back to where it started.
When I was making those five sculptures, I had the strange feeling that I wasn’t doing them alone.
In a way, I felt like I was making them together with that eleven-year-old girl who had no idea where her life was going.
She just knew that there was a Giant Schnauzer puppy waiting for her at home.
I wish I could show her what came next.
I wish I could tell her that the dog she was completely obsessed with would eventually lead her into a life where, years later, the Giant Schnauzer Club would ask her to make something for them.
Life has its ways of going full circle.
Sometimes you don’t notice the circle until you are standing exactly where you started.
And this one felt particularly special.
Photos: GSCA Trophy (top)
Wendy & my sister (bottom)
A practical september note
And now, because apparently we cannot spend an entire Gazette talking about existential questions, clay, childhood and the mysterious ways of life…
We need to talk about Christmas.
Yes. Already.
September is actually the right time to think about a sculpture for Christmas.
I know. It sounds ridiculously early. Christmas is still far enough away that most of us are happily pretending it isn’t happening.
But clay has its own calendar.
A new sculpture takes at least a couple of weeks to create. Larger pieces can take months. And if it is a breed I haven’t worked with before, I need time to study it and figure out how I want to approach it. Then there is the sculpting, drying, firing, finishing and, finally, shipping.
I don’t like rushing any of it. Clay doesn’t like being rushed. Neither do I. So September is the real deadline if you have something specific in mind. Contacting me now gives us time to discuss the idea, plan the work for October, finish it during November and have it ready to ship by the beginning of December.
After that, Christmas shipping becomes a little too exciting for my taste. I would rather not discover whether a parcel can spend an unexpected holiday somewhere between Italy and your front door.
There is another possibility, of course.
Sometimes the perfect Christmas sculpture is already sitting on one of my shelves.
I have had collectors follow a piece for months before finally deciding that Christmas was the moment to bring it home. Sometimes someone buys one as a surprise for a partner or family member. And sometimes, after a long year, someone simply decides that they would like to give themselves something meaningful.
Those are my favourite kinds of Christmas presents. Not the rushed, generic kind. The kind where somebody has been thinking about a piece for a long time and finally decides:
This one is coming home with me.
If you have a particular breed in mind that isn’t currently on my shelf, don’t wait until December to ask. Send me a message and we can talk about it, look at the possibilities and see what makes sense. And if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for yet, that’s fine too. That is usually how these things begin.
With a conversation.
*If a sculpture is the right one but paying for it all at once isn’t convenient, instalment payments are also available. Just ask me when you get in touch and we can discuss the options.
New pieces in progress this month
From the studio shelves
Several new sculptures have recently found their place on the studio shelves while they wait for their future homes.
Some will probably leave quite quickly.
Others may quietly wait until exactly the right collector comes along.
Both possibilities make me equally happy.
If you’re curious about any of them, or if you’ve been hoping to see a particular breed one day, simply reply to this email.
Even if you’re only gathering information or wondering whether a future commission might be possible, you’re always welcome to write.
Good conversations often begin with simple curiosity.
That’s all for now!
If you’d like to reach out, simply email me at applerainart@gmail.com
Barbara
