DRIFTWOOD SERIES: RESILIENCE

Driftwood Series: Resilience
Summer 2009
Sold





I see this piece as a tribute to our ability to endure and to survive. In the early stages of the construction, my focus was on a plant or bush shape using the driftwood and some rusty metal pieces I had selected. I had an old metal top taken from some unidentifiable container and had positioned it to represent a dead, dried-up flower pod. I chose driftwood pieces that were longer and barer looking to give the piece a starker appearance and tied them together with rusted metal strips bent like unfurling ribbon. The piece was well on its way to being a really dark piece.

Everything changed. I was digging through the driftwood pieces and came upon a bare, straight piece that was bluish-green in color. As soon as I saw the piece, I knew what it was that I wanted to say. The thought that consumed me was “no matter what”. I would use the green stick to represent a new stalk emerging from the detritus of dead branches. The piece would be about rebirth and revival … about survival. No matter what had or was to happen, this plant would make it. No matter what has or will happen to mankind … we will make it. Because, like the plant … we are resilient.

I promised one of the teachers at school that I would work with her classes on making things from found objects. I decided to hang a piece in her classroom as an example of what one might make and chose Resilience. I wanted to talk to the kids about how one aspect or piece of a sculpture can define the whole piece. By chance, my principal visited the classroom and saw the piece. She purchased the piece for her husband for his birthday. It now resides in Brattleboro.

DRIFTWOOD SERIES: COMPLEXITIES OF THE HEART

Driftwood Series: Complexities of the Heart
Fall 2009
Sold









Most often, when I am developing a sculpture, I focus on the shapes and relationships of the materials to one another first. Later on, the piece starts to come together and I begin to form mental images of where I might go with the piece. At that pint, I am doing a lot of trial and error and select and discard different materials that seem promising from my stockpiles. I may twist and turn a particular piece of driftwood for what seems to be forever in search of a particular angle that speaks to me. On the other hand, I can sometimes lay selected objects in a pile and know they will work together without further examination. The process sometimes suggests a topic, or theme, or title for the final piece.

When I was working on this sculpture, it was different. I was already thinking about relationships and how difficult and complex they were. I don’t usually start with a theme, but in this case I knew I wanted to do something involving this topic. My first step was to write down a list of words that came to mind and that I associated with relationships in some way … layers, diverse, embrace, hard, soft, heart, black, askew, shape, etc. I dove into my materials piles to see what I could find. I selected a variety of shapes and sizes of driftwood that might combine in such a way as to express the layering and to imply the complexity. Unbelievably, in my metals bin, I found a heart that I had made for a sculpture that had been dismantled. I utilized the hardness of the coarse wire mesh used to make the heart and a layer of black paint to hint at the potential darker side of dealing with relationships. I also wanted to contrast the softer, more natural wood with the use of harder metal to further add a sense of opposing ideas and clashing.

Positioning was important to me in the assemblage. I wanted the piece to be slightly askew and I wanted a sense of movement (I chose left to right across the placement of the heart). The heart is purposefully not centered. However, it is cradled by curved driftwood pieces that I used to represent arms and the idea of an object being nestled or embraced. Contrast again … black heart … embracing.

At some undetermined moment, I kinda know at a piece is done. In this case, I hung the sculpture on my barn wall and tried moving around the room to check it out at different angles. The key words heart and complex seemed to stick. I chose Complexities of the Heart for a title and it seemed right.

A couple of days later Anne called me at work to ask me about a price for the piece. A friend’s sister, Mary, had stopped by and had seen the piece in the barn. Mary purchased the piece and took it to her cabin to go with an earlier piece her sister had gotten from me for her. The sculpture now resides in Minnesota.

WELCOME TO MY ART BLOG

My art pieces generally have names. I give them the names … so maybe they are just aliases … aka. This blog tells the stories behind my art. In reality, I cannot actually describe my art to you. Have you read Einstein’s Dreams? It is about multiple realities or multiple interpretations of his theory of relativity. I believe the author has a point. I cannot describe my art to you. I can only describe my interpretation of the art. My reality. What you see when you view the piece may not be the same. I don’t mean that you see it differently. I mean it might not be the same. If you adopt it, you may give it your family name.

The process of creating art is always complex though, at times, it may not appear so. The process is composed of a multitude of both complementary and oppositional aspects. Like content … materials … intent … innuendo. Every aspect has purpose and every step along the way has a reality of its own. The process is filled with something else. It is filled with what is not there. Like I said, it’s complex. When it all comes together, it has meaning. That meaning, taken with the physical, gives the piece a sense of wholeness. Circles. Circles of life. They show up in everything I do.

When you achieve a state of wholeness in a piece, it has a voice. It’s the voice that is used to enable a conversation between the piece and the viewer. I think that is what I am ultimately seeking. Not every viewer and every piece can have a conversation. But when they do … it is special.