Musings

From Earth to Metal — A Continuing Body of Work

Somewhere along this road, searching to find the human spirit, I touched some clay and found it. As I pulled more of the clay away it reached out to me — the universality of the human spirit. I wonder still — to myself — how do I keep the emotion in the work. They are so abstract, beauty simplified, emotions smoothed out to such a refinement that they become so basic. They take on their own power ? I still walk as an artist on this road, enchanted by all, and maybe some day I will understand it.

 

The reason my pieces work without armature is because I use a clay with enough integrity to support my figures, and because I always move with the clay, not against it. With the Subtractionist method, I have to find the form and let it out — interpret the emotion, then release it. It's not an illustration or a pose or a statement, but rather, its own identity.

 

 

Tread lightly, Beauty
as we walk across my heart searching for a place
to fit you again
And I will be free to a reawakening of the senses.
The allure of your forms and colors,
I surrender to you, Beauty
for I know you will complete me

 

 

Let my sculptures speak to you as they do to me, in a soft whisper as I pass by them, reassuring me that we all have the same beauty within.

 

I am a child again! When my hands touch the clay, they pull it away, exposing the image from within. The raw form appears, then becomes clear. The spirit of the piece becomes real. Knowing fingers feel the skin and flesh: sensitive emotions emerge. The spirit is freed.

As if a gift, visualization leads to refinement. Original, complex emotions and spontaneity remain. I pull from the clay and release what is barely there. This is called the rare, Substractionist method.

The whole process to create a bronze from the clay original requires that I stay hands-on throughout the complex casting, assuring that the transformation from clay to bronze captures, yet moves, with these feelings.

To create a sculpture that is not a static pose, but instead one that envelops human emotions and where, just for a moment, the hard metal becomes the reflection of the flesh and bone of humanity.

The soul in the sculpture lives and I am free to go on to the next one, all the while carrying the emotional impact of past sculptures to the next creation.

 

All I really am is somebody who plays with clay .....