Kansas City Star review of "Dream Bodies: Transformative Figures"

Link

Pre-bedtime thoughts about my work

If I had to say something about my work in a general sense, I would say that I am fascinated by us. I feel empathy for broken people and I want viewers to feel it too, but I also think We are broken.  We as in "all of humanity that inhabits the modern world".  And I want viewers to reflect on what that means.  I tend to focus on the sadder side of the spectrum, but the whole of life is essentially tragic, even when it is at its most love filled and joyful, so I think it is merited.  I think everything that has ever broken or swelled my heart has been human, and I think that art is at its best when it subtly encourages us to empathize with our own or our neighbor’s humanity.

The Mist

Just for fair warning, I am going to quote Stephen King here in a moment.  It has been a shitty week but it's getting better. Not shitty in the sense that someone is trying to cut of my arm with a machette because I live on the wrong side of the street, but shitty in the sense that I am having a hard time with the current pace of my chosen career path.  My sculptures have lately seemed to be losing the meaning that I was attempting to imbue them with, and by that I don't mean new sculptures had less meaning but that sculptures I have made don't seem as successful as they did a week ago.  All this is against the background of seriously declining studio revenues, etc. etc. etc. So like I said, not life or death, but everything is relative, so if all you have ever had is a hang nail, breaking your finger seems like a 10 on the pain scale.  Anyway, I constantly struggle with the ego of a middle-class white american male, and the fact that it tells me that I am destined for GREATNESS, so every small dip in the creative cycle could possibly be proof that I may not be the next coming of Rodin or Michelangelo.  I may just have a life with a decent career, nothing legendary.  All of this is hard to process on the best of days, and it has been a week or so since those kind of days. (my wife is a saint to put up with my creative peaks and valleys)  All of these thoughts snapped into clear focus for half a second last night as I was reading the Stephen King short story, The Mist.  Afterwards and still now, I can't make sense of it, but at that moment I was OK with it. (just as a pre-note- this isn't my father, he is nothing less than totally convinced that everything I have ever done is beyond great)

Here is the passage quoted:

"It took me twenty years of living with my father to accept the idea that being good could be good enough.  

You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think- I did-that God put you on earth to blow your father away.

It turned out I wasn't as good as he was. I kept trying to be for longer than I should have, maybe. I had a show in New York and it did poorly-the art critics beat me over the head with my father.  A year later I was supporting myself and Steff with the commercial stuff. She was pregnant and I sat down and talked to myself about it. There result of that conversation was a belief that serious art was always going to be a hobby for me, no more. ...  ...And since then that voice of disappointed expectation- that cheated child's voice that can never be satisfied with such a mild superlative as good- has pretty much fallen silent.  And except for a few rumbles it has pretty much been silent ever since. Maybe you can tell me- why should the silencing of that childish, demanding voice seem so much like dying?"

I know we can only do what we can do in any given moment, but if so why do so many of us, myself included, measure ourselves against the accomplishments of others?

Moments of Decision

Here is a studio photo of two new sculptures. These are the first in a series about moments of decision. They are going to begin at 1/3 scale, and these are sculpted in oil-based clay, molded with silicone, and cast in Forton MG, which is an acrylic resin. This series began one day when my wife and I were walking in to our local grocery store. It takes about 10-15 second to get from the door to the produce section, and usually 3/4 of the way into the store there is a day-old baked goods table. On this day as we walked in, there was a giant man standing in front of what I think was a table of day-old banana loaf. The ENTIRE time we walked in he was standing there, totally motionless, right in front of the banana loaf, with an empty shopping basket in his hand. I thought to myself that he must be having an epic battle inside his mind. "I want it, but I shouldn't have it, I want it, but I shouldn't have it. etc" He stayed totally still as we walked by, and as far as I am concerned, he might still be there, trying to decide.

The 2nd sculpture is a man holding a letter.  With this piece, I wanted to be a little less obvious about the specific conflict that he is having.  The line between not enough, and too much information is a fine one, and it is good for me to occasionally choose to try for one side of the line or the other in order to give me a better sense of where the line is.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This post has nothing to do with sculpture. I just wanted for go on record and say that I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am currently watching the whole DVD set, right now on Season 3, and Damn if it isn't awesome.

Just wanted to say that. I am not ashamed.

Empathy and what we owe to our fellow man.

I have been working on a new sculpture that was inspired by two events that happened simultaneously. The photo is of the sculpture currently in progress. I had just resumed reading the book Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Richby Robert Frank after boarding my return flight from Chicago to Kansas City.  That is the first event.  Richistan is about the new culture of wealth which, the author says, is so different from most people's daily experience that the rich live in a different country than us. It is a fabulous book about wealth in america and how we all perceive our own situation. It is also about conspicuously conspicuous consumption. I mean, impulse buying a 30 million dollar house kind of consumption. Now for the second event: I had my nose crammed in the book, trying to take up as much space as possible, a look of pure annoyance on my face so as to subtly encourage those people who were still boarding to choose a seat other than the middle seat next to me. About that time, the stewardess comes over the intercom and says that the flight is completely full, and so please take the first available seat, as all seats will be taken. Instantly my strategy has to change, now there is no chance that the seat will be empty, and I have to encourage undesirables to get away, and at the same time look inviting to the tiny people (mostly women) that seem like they don't have B.O. and don't like to talk. But it was too late. I had been successfully scaring people off so well that there were two seats left and one of them was next to me. That is when I looked up and saw the two people left without seats. Coming down the isle first is the perfect middle seat candidate. A 5 foot 2 inch, MAYBE 100 pound girl that seems just akward enough in her glances around the cabin that I know she won't say a word the whole flight. Following closely behind is her polar opposite. 6 foot tall, between 300 and 400 pounds, and just waiting for someone to make eye contact with so he can talk. Nanoseconds after I put it all together, the girl chooses the seat just in front of us, and the man says "Sorry man, but, can I squeeze in there?"  Followed by, "Holy crap, this seat belt fits! You're lucky man, I 've lost 40 pounds since the last time I flew. That time the seat belt wouldn't fit."  And then, "You live in Kansas City?"  I spent the next hour and 20 minutes with stewardesses getting mad at me because I was leaning so far into the isle, but it was either that or flesh on flesh sweaty arm to arm action.  He felt bad, every time he would shift or drop his peanuts he would apologize profusely, saying "Sorry man, I'm a big dude."  And I felt bad for him, I can't imagine what it would be like having snot-nosed, self-righteous people like me, who have had most of the world handed to them, along with high metabolism, look down their noses at me all the time.  But then I thought, I fit in MY space, he doesn't fit in HIS.  And then I thought why is the excess next to me disgusting, and the excess in this book something to aspire to?  

I'm not sure where I stand, still.  I waffle back and forth between feeling bad for him, knowing that I couldn't walk a mile in his shoes, and feeling indignant thinking "Damn DUDE! Walk a mile,  or 20!  And I think that is similar to the tightrope I walk with wealth.  On one hand, that guy worked his ass off and made sacrifices, let him enjoy his 20,000 square foot house.  On the other hand, "What do you need with 15 bathrooms you gluttonous asswipe! This new sculpture is beginning to be about the relationship between the two excesses.  If we are to be consistent, where do we get off thinking that one excess is admirable, and the other abhorrent.  Both are people taking more than their fair share.

Art and Fear

The creative struggle  and books that are concerned with it will probably become a recurring theme here. The first book that I read that dealt with the struggle/problem/demons, (whatever you want to call it) that we sculptors (ok, all creative types) deal with, was Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking Art and Fear is the first book that I read that didn't treat me like I was a mystical spirit that needed kid gloves. Pretty quickly it breaks apart the reasons that people stop making sculpture/artwork/poems, and then in a very matter of fact way, talks about strategies that will keep artists working through the low points in the creative cycle. It is a book that I have reread at least three times in full, and one that I constantly refer to. So, if you are having a hard time making habits of making art, buy it. Everyone that I know that has it considers it to have nearly "bible" status.