Two words describe my sculpture. For the Bases that word is "loss," to be joined in the later Feet and Busts by "enough." These are the concepts and concerns that direct my work.
Bases
Nothing better defines the condition of being human than loss. It begins at birth when immediately we lose the womb, and continues unabated until our loss of life. A common consolation is that in losing one thing another is gained, but the gain never equals the loss; the losses are always of things more fundamental for gains of things more abstract.
Closely resembling the marble and bronze tree stumps, rocks, and clouds of historical figurative sculptures like Pigalle's Mercury Attaching His Wings and Remington's Mountain Man from which the men and women who once populated them have fled, my vacant Bases are meant to address loss over a broad spectrum of issues. Initially it was the loss of the base as a legitimate element of progressive sculpture, and the recognition of my own former complicity in the largely unfounded and unexamined dogma that continues to surround their disuse. This was joined by the loss of belief in the figure and what it represents, and more generally, the loss or degradation of belief in ideas, like quality and belief, responsibility, commitment, originality, and authorship. These issues have accrued over time, but are now linked in my mind. To me they are fundamental to sculpture, and their loss inevitably leads me to a melancholy that becomes part of the sculptures too.
In the history of sculpture there are many good sculptors making good sculpture, there are many bad sculptors making bad sculpture, and then there are those others; the good sculptors making bad sculpture, especially bad figurative sculpture, or so it seems. Take a walk through almost any museum and you'll see them, sculptures of figures that are smooth, and stiff, and uninspired. Sometimes though, if you lower your gaze, something more than the body is afoot. There, below the arms and legs or beneath a well formed keister, it is possible to discover a base of surprising expression and interest which is usually overlooked. Not the pedestal mind you, but the base. It is in this nether region that the sculptor of Old can be seen working without concern for figurative conventions, pushing material around with the freedom and unbounded will to make sculpture of a Modern without even knowing what a Modern would be.
Though the human body is the biggest challenge there is, and though I love it, when I began the Bases I couldn't yet believe in it. I believed, rather, in the ground on which it stands or sits. My little exploration was that whole zone of sculpture that has been set aside by sculptors as something unusable; as something by definition incompatible with art. My sculptures were sculptures of the bases of other sculptures; not identical reproductions, but close enough approximations that if a person were familiar with the original sculpture and remembered the base they would recognize my sculpture as the base. My Mountain Man is Frederick Remington's Mountain Man, my The Lost Pleiad is Randolph Rogers' The Lost Pleiad. Not to understand the sculptures as bases is to cut the legs out from under them.
The point of the Bases, however, isn't to make an exact reproduction of the originals. It isn't to bring attention to overlooked aspects of well known sculptor's work, or resuscitate the work of often little appreciated precursors. These are personal interests which may or may not be of interest to anyone else, as is my interest in the story of the development of the gallery as a replacement for the base in a failed attempt to have sculpture engage its audience in their own space. To the surrounding space of the gallery I much prefer the supporting place of the base as a declarative statement from the sculpture, "now you're in my world." The real point of my working from bases is as a way to add rigor and limits to how I make a sculpture. They are an equivalent to working from nature, no different than having a model sit, or observing a tree.
Feet and Busts
Slowly I've begun introducing feet and busts. Some of the feet come from the figures that stood on the bases I use as reference, others from imagination. So far the busts are all imaginary. Why these sad, crippled feet and busts? Specifically it can be traced to my abiding interest in Carpeaux's Ugolino, and an expression of my own sad, crippled feelings mixed up with so much loss. But it's also that their misshapeness evokes fragility and tenderness. It also evokes temporality, and this is an entrance for "enough."
When is an object enough (for me) to be a sculpture? When is it enough of a foot to be a foot? Sometimes I'm surprised by how little. It often means that a sculpture is done before I had intended, and looks very different than the sculpture I set out to achieve. Enough is when the idea emerges sufficiently, or when I see something I recognize as a good sculpture; sometimes it happens together. Though I work with the ideas of "loss" and "enough," I don't consider my sculptures as fragments; either as pieces of a fragmented whole, or as pieces standing in for a whole. I see them rather as details from which nothing is missing, but the whole not easily seen.
Bases
Nothing better defines the condition of being human than loss. It begins at birth when immediately we lose the womb, and continues unabated until our loss of life. A common consolation is that in losing one thing another is gained, but the gain never equals the loss; the losses are always of things more fundamental for gains of things more abstract.
Closely resembling the marble and bronze tree stumps, rocks, and clouds of historical figurative sculptures like Pigalle's Mercury Attaching His Wings and Remington's Mountain Man from which the men and women who once populated them have fled, my vacant Bases are meant to address loss over a broad spectrum of issues. Initially it was the loss of the base as a legitimate element of progressive sculpture, and the recognition of my own former complicity in the largely unfounded and unexamined dogma that continues to surround their disuse. This was joined by the loss of belief in the figure and what it represents, and more generally, the loss or degradation of belief in ideas, like quality and belief, responsibility, commitment, originality, and authorship. These issues have accrued over time, but are now linked in my mind. To me they are fundamental to sculpture, and their loss inevitably leads me to a melancholy that becomes part of the sculptures too.
In the history of sculpture there are many good sculptors making good sculpture, there are many bad sculptors making bad sculpture, and then there are those others; the good sculptors making bad sculpture, especially bad figurative sculpture, or so it seems. Take a walk through almost any museum and you'll see them, sculptures of figures that are smooth, and stiff, and uninspired. Sometimes though, if you lower your gaze, something more than the body is afoot. There, below the arms and legs or beneath a well formed keister, it is possible to discover a base of surprising expression and interest which is usually overlooked. Not the pedestal mind you, but the base. It is in this nether region that the sculptor of Old can be seen working without concern for figurative conventions, pushing material around with the freedom and unbounded will to make sculpture of a Modern without even knowing what a Modern would be.
Though the human body is the biggest challenge there is, and though I love it, when I began the Bases I couldn't yet believe in it. I believed, rather, in the ground on which it stands or sits. My little exploration was that whole zone of sculpture that has been set aside by sculptors as something unusable; as something by definition incompatible with art. My sculptures were sculptures of the bases of other sculptures; not identical reproductions, but close enough approximations that if a person were familiar with the original sculpture and remembered the base they would recognize my sculpture as the base. My Mountain Man is Frederick Remington's Mountain Man, my The Lost Pleiad is Randolph Rogers' The Lost Pleiad. Not to understand the sculptures as bases is to cut the legs out from under them.
The point of the Bases, however, isn't to make an exact reproduction of the originals. It isn't to bring attention to overlooked aspects of well known sculptor's work, or resuscitate the work of often little appreciated precursors. These are personal interests which may or may not be of interest to anyone else, as is my interest in the story of the development of the gallery as a replacement for the base in a failed attempt to have sculpture engage its audience in their own space. To the surrounding space of the gallery I much prefer the supporting place of the base as a declarative statement from the sculpture, "now you're in my world." The real point of my working from bases is as a way to add rigor and limits to how I make a sculpture. They are an equivalent to working from nature, no different than having a model sit, or observing a tree.
Feet and Busts
Slowly I've begun introducing feet and busts. Some of the feet come from the figures that stood on the bases I use as reference, others from imagination. So far the busts are all imaginary. Why these sad, crippled feet and busts? Specifically it can be traced to my abiding interest in Carpeaux's Ugolino, and an expression of my own sad, crippled feelings mixed up with so much loss. But it's also that their misshapeness evokes fragility and tenderness. It also evokes temporality, and this is an entrance for "enough."
When is an object enough (for me) to be a sculpture? When is it enough of a foot to be a foot? Sometimes I'm surprised by how little. It often means that a sculpture is done before I had intended, and looks very different than the sculpture I set out to achieve. Enough is when the idea emerges sufficiently, or when I see something I recognize as a good sculpture; sometimes it happens together. Though I work with the ideas of "loss" and "enough," I don't consider my sculptures as fragments; either as pieces of a fragmented whole, or as pieces standing in for a whole. I see them rather as details from which nothing is missing, but the whole not easily seen.
