Art festival work

I have been working on the sculptures to enter into the Jewish Art Festival to be held at the J.C.C. here in SLC.
Seven of them are works that I will only have to do clean up and refurbish.
The new piece is a Menorah that I am creating specifically for this show. When I got the original show notice, I had just retired from my 'day job' and was not sure if I was ready to taking on some much creativity after such a hiatus. The big enticement was that I wanted to create a new piece specifically with a Jewish theme. Hence the Menorah. I relied on the experiences that I had creating 'trees', many years ago. A few examples are here at the house. The biggest one is the 'christmas tree' that I made for my parents home. It has been decorated in many way during the years. Its initial design was for inside, 'with just tinsel' draped over the branches and changing color spot lights to illuminate it. Next, it was place outside here in S.L.C., Christmas lights were stung on it. It now has a new place on a permanent base in my yard.
Well, back to the new Menorah. I knew what the necessary elements were for the design, nine arms that hold candles, the center one, called a 'Shamus', is taller and is lit every night, while the others are lit one more each night until they are all lit on the eighth days of Hannukah.
The initial idea was to make something that would appear to have been created naturally. A 'tree' was the start, I sketched many ideas and came up with a general layout. I had some pipe that would make a good trunk and I bought two lengths of black pipe, one 3/4" and the other 1/2". Cut them into varying lengths and began to weld them together to match the sketch, as a start point. From there I allowed my creativity to take over, as I arranged and place the many pieces. Some were bent and others were cut, placed and rewelded. It took a few days to get them to begin to fill out my conception. The heights of the arms were then trimmed and the candle holders were then welded on. I left it that way for a few days as I evaluated the overall feel and visual complexities of the piece. To me, it was really too stark and lifeless. It needed more of an organic appearance. I had experimented with making the top of the trunk lead more fluidly into the branches. The open area of the reshaped pipe needed to be concealed more. I used the welder to add an organic feeling texture to that area. It had fulfilled my needs and also was the inspiration to adding the same types of organic 'veins' to the rest of the piece. It took a few days of adding this detail, evaluating the look and adding more, to get it done. I used a grinder and a rotary wire brush to complete the surface prep and remove all the weld remnants. Now to decide the finish.