The past months have been filled with walking in circles.  The circle, with perfect symmetry and with no beginning or end, is an apt metaphor for the past two years.  In my search for my next artistic idea, I’ve taken a “walkabout” seeking what to create now. 


I’ve taken many paths, experimented with new ideas, tripped over proverbial rocks. It’s been a bit of a soul journey.  I realized that my sculpture, over the past 35 or so years, has grown through  a continual process of learning, growing and changing direction. After all, that's what art requires--if it's been done before (even by you) don't do it again!


I love to sculpt and I love to sculpt joy. OK, now, how to be different. I’ve been "differenting" hard most every day the past two and a half years.  My shop looks disheveled—equipment everywhere, materials laying askance and unfinished, several experiments gone not-quite right, several disasters.  Trying new techniques and methods, the path is full of dead ends, rabbit holes, bumps in the road, and detours…a journey not for the faint of heart.


I’ve created steel-rod structures with stretch-over skins to further refine my Swoopie concept. I’ve tried detailed faces and no faces at all. I’ve tried sculptures that can be suspended and those that fly.  There have been simpler sculptures, different finishes and textures…my studio looks like a mad chemist’s laboratory. Took a shot at sculptures that could be disassembled for shipping and reassembled on site. I could go on, but you get the gist. SO this is the part where I share with you my next BIG idea.  But, I got nothing. Nada. Parts only. No kabooms.


One of my sculpture criteria is "Wow!” All of these side trips were enjoyable and broadened my knowledge of materials, techniques, and creative problem solving, but looking at the resulting sculptures, Hmmm, no wow.
​

As it turns out, I walked completely around my creative circle to find I still really love my Swoopies and their “Wow!” Since each sculpture is hand created by me, my new focus is on streamlining their production: Cores are faster, layup is faster and finishes--I've found a couple that really look beautiful and deeply textured. I’m thinking of exciting new swoopie figures full of  joy…something sorely needed these days. So there it is, back where I started after running all those laps.  

Mandalas, Clocks, Zodiacs and a thousand other artistic creations share the most mysterious shape known to mankind--the Circle.  Electrons orbit in circles around our atoms, we orbit the surface of the Earth, the Earth orbits the Sun, which orbits the Milky Way, which orbits who-knows-what, which orbits who-knows-why.  Though the circle has no beginning and no end, we mark its sectors with all kinds of seasons.

As I pass hour twenty of my personal season clock, the seasonal music and dance  changed and so must I.  It's a season for reflection, which leads me to my newest creation, Re-Emerge. 

I've long been fascinated by heroic odysseys and their appearance in art, movies, literature and life.  Joseph Campbell spent his lifetime seeking out stories of Hero's Journeys and the metaphors they represent. I'm a big fan so I set out on my own journey to present a joyful sculptural representation of breaking out, self discovery and eventually returning home with those new discoveries--completing the circle.

The hand work for Re-Emerge, a trio of heroic sculptures, is nearly complete. This trio captures my take on a modern version of the classic hero’s journey, whether it be a momentous life change, a challenge, a spiritual seeking, or a real-life trek. Reaching, the first of the trio, depicts that moment when it is clearly time to depart from the known world's safety into the new and unknown.  The second sculpture, Renewing, faces a new set of challenges where all the old values are tested and new truths reveal themselves in uncanny ways.  The final trio member is Returning.  Our hero returns home, but has been transformed through their journey, bringing the joy of new knowledge back for the benefit of community and heroes yet-to-journey.

                           Ah..."the smell of greasepaint and the roar of the crowd..."

Seven-year-old Willa Grace Vaughn (full disclosure: my granddaughter) sings to everything: the rocks she is painting; the dog she is carrying in both arms and the needle for making pillows for her “stuffy zoo”—each animal gets its own pillow and cardboard box.  I’m her audience, but she doesn’t know I am listening.
I’m old and I don’t sing when I sculpt anymore, but I should.  I guess I do sing in my head to an audience I can’t see.  Always have. Some people need an audience, even an imaginary one. 
Some are terrified of audience.  I need one, real or imagined.  It lets me be me, maybe ugly or dumb, maybe brilliant, but I need one.  It seems odd for a sculptor who largely works solo. I need an audience to keep me going.  I imagine success and people to notice it.  I also imagine failure and the prospect of disappointing an audience.  That helps me clean out the losing ideas.
Covid vaporized most of the obvious audiences.  Relating to little Zoom squares makes me dizzy and distracted.  Masks filter and distort human interaction, even at a “live” assembly.  Cancelled sculpture shows thwarted my ability to measure an audience.  Even the surviving shows with masks made it difficult to measure a successful sculpture.   
Measuring success only requires looking and listening.  A comedian measures laughter.  No laughter, no comedy.  Sculpture success is measured when a viewer stops and either says (or mouths), “Wow.”  The more the better, but masks throw off your count.
So now that we are between Omicron and Spawn-of-Omicron, HOORAY.  Audiences await and the road beckons.  My annual May-June sculpture installation tour takes me and bride Deborah to nine states, this time crossing into Wisconsin (after vowing not to place sculpture east of the Mississippi River).  Oh well.  John Denver sings in my ear, “I’m going to see some friends of mine and some that I don’t know, some who aren’t familiar with my name.”
And finally, my audience awaits.

Write if you see beauty,
​Harold

In my studio, DVDs of “Northern Exposure,” always make me smile.  One forgotten episode, called “Cicely,” reached out to bop me on the nose.
      “Cicely” contains the origin story for Northern Exposure’s backdrop Alaskan town, Cicely, and involves a hundred-year-old legend of ladies Roslyn and Cicely, partners, setting out to make a utopia for their dreams of freedom, art and self-expression.  This delightful and convoluted story won Director’s and Peabody awards in its day, but one scene stood out to me. 
      After a hard winter, Cicely takes ill.  Roslyn, her lover, distraught, begins blaming herself for risking Cicely's life for the sake of her own dreams of an art utopia in Alaska.
      In a frontier bar with friends Franz and Mary, sour and woozy, Roslyn laments,

     “If you were in a burning house, and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save?  The cat. You would save the cat, because the cat is alive.  Art is dead, it is just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life.  It destroys life.”
      Franz: “She is right!”
      Mary: “No.  No Franz. Without art, the cat does not live. Without art we cannot speak of the cat.  We cannot know the cat.  We cannot see the cat. Without art, there is no cat.”    
Hmmm.
      This exchange placed me directly on the knife’s edge of my beliefs.  Do we pursue art through the world or the world through art?  I guess I have done both, but at different times.  Looking through the lens, which direction is real?  Or, are they both real, or both not real?  What is a cat but our thoughts make it so.
        How about you?  This seems like a conversation for late at night, but if you too are up late at night, I would love to hear your take.
Write if you see beauty​,
Harold  

My computer occasionally tires of waiting for me to brilliantly push its keys and it flashes over to screensaver photographs selected randomly from my (its) picture file.  The file sags under the weight of roughly 10,000 (count ‘em) pictures digitized from all the photos ever taken by me, Deborah and anyone in my family back to my great-great-greats in the mid nineteenth century.


This parade of photos switches out one of the eight-or-nine images every three seconds or so—just enough time to remember the happy in the photo and not enough time to mull what might be sadder.  Photos of the departed flash up long enough to feel the joy of seeing them again but short enough to avoid the tears. This magical screen-of-my-life fits curiously with an ancient conceit of mine. 


You see, in high school I was certain that I was SO important that there was some magical recording angel who captured everything I saw or did and he/she would somehow, ultimately, on my command, play back any chosen event for my reminiscences.  Such was the narcissism of a seventeen-year-old. 


But in a curious sense, this screensaver IS the playback of my life.  (I also was curious how I would be the first-ever immortal, but that’s another story.)  As these photos flash by, I see me and my friends long ago when all our possibilities were in play.  I know now how a lot of the stories ended, but I didn’t then.  It seems strange to think of all the doors which could have opened—and which ones actually did.


I find myself talking to my earlier self, issuing warnings and wondering what might have been if.  .  . well, just if.  I see losing my best friend from college over my stupid comment about his fiancée.  I see Grandma who did all she could to encourage my artistic side. (Thanks Grandma).  I see my best high school friend mugging for the camera before heading to Northwestern U. for some mistakes I would now warn him about, but I was clueless then. 


There before me parades visual evidence of the joys and catastrophes which made me me.  But what made me a sculptor?  The sculpture door opened later in my life and no earlier photos even hint at it.  Still I am who I am because of these memories and, ever the sculptor now, I wonder how this path shows itself in my art.


I seek joy in my sculpture.  I believe heaven is right here on earth and all who seek beauty will find it. Amateur psychologists might assume this compensates for some deep grievance or depravation in my past.  But no, no prison time or sad affairs or personal catastrophes form my worldview.  I had some medium bumps growing up, but some medium-to-large joys to go with them.


My best theory (and you are welcome to take a shot too) rises from my teenage conceit that I was so special the path would clear before me and my only duty is gratitude.  As I age, I see I am not so special, but the path did clear, and Lordy, I am grateful.  And I get to sculpt.

The Sculpture


The city council met last night, the vote was nine to two,
The town was lacking culture and they knew just what to do,
‘Cause sculpture rhymes with culture and everybody knows,
The pedestal in city square is where it has to goes.
They put a call, ’twas sent to all, the sculptors--any ages,
They checked the prisons, bars and gutters, then the yellow pages,
But no-one answered, no-one came, the city was aflutter
To think nobody would step up, not even from the gutter.


The city clerk was hard at work but thought she could recall,
A note shoved underneath the door by someone in the hall.
“Be there noon on Sunday.  Be at the city square,
Bring your gloves and welders. Show up if you care.”
The city crews were ready, but what before their eyes,
No one had ever seen, no-way, no-how, no-wise.
A pickup truck sat silent, not a soul in sight,
And sitting in the bed was—well--was just delight.
The cargo was a heavy one, a giant sprawling mass, 
Erected out of chewing gum, marble, bronze and glass.
Some thought Mona Lisa smiled, some just felt elated,
Some said Jackson Pollock, some thought of “The David.”


The city crews went straight to work and blocked off center lane.
The doohickey was heavy, and they’d have to get a crane.
By four PM they had it up, it seemed like it was sparkling,
They moved that empty pickup truck over to the parking.
The men now stood like young boys; the wrinkles left their flesh.
Their hands were soft and tender; their breath was minty fresh.
Townsfolk heard the rumors, “Come and see this Whoosits.”
Soon the square was packed with kith and kin and nudists.
People gawked for hours, the youthful lost their zits,
Tattoos were removed, by what this thing emits.


Hippies had their visions. Geezers found their swing.
The crowd was rock and rollin’ while social distancing.
The moon stopped in its orbit, hanging overhead,
to expedite the growing crowd, extra light to shed,
Vegetables grew larger, clocks an hour fast.
Cars were running smoother; horns began to blast.
Busses soon were filling up, Amtrak added trains.
People came from miles around on boats and cars and planes.
Maple trees were growing money on their lower branches.
Morning came, two suns came up, what could be the chances?
A coin tossed at the sculpture bounces back as gold.
Sister’s magic wand turns her brother into toad.


Word about this sculpture got back to a troll,
some financial devil who finally made parole.
He made some frantic calls to his Chinese knock-offers.
He told the evil story of how they’d fill their coffers.
They had to hurry to the square to take the measurements.
They’d take the knockoffs on the road, it all made perfect sense.
They raced to be the first, they had to move like rockets,
to knock the sculpture off and then to fill their pockets.
But when they came upon the crowd, it seemed to be withdrawn.
The pedestal stood empty. The pickup truck was gone.
The moon was back to normal, only one sun shone.
The secrets of The Sculpture never would be known.
Write if you see beauty​,
Harold  
     
Shadow Sculpting

So here we are.  Our special moment.  All the stars align as never before, on their way to never-have-been.  This is now.  But what IS now?  How do we speak of now?  What does now contain to inform us, to comfort us, to challenge us.  All we know is that now has never been before.  


Historians describe how the great artists were "of their time" and how their works gave guidance and inspiration "in their time." In their now.  Serious contemporary sculptors (like me!) feel this obligation deeply. To properly do my work as a serious sculptor, I must somehow express MY now. 
Each artist works from a palette they know, looking for a shade expressing some version of now and hoping that magical force which made them artists will guide that shade in their hand to an understanding of--now. 
Happily, I find myself composing my next sculpture and again looking for that perfect shade.  It is a struggle, but worth it in the end.  I feel that my now is the clash of joy and hope against a backdrop of politics, despair, and disease.  Don't worry.  I'm not about to cut my ear off.  But, you notice, the essence of  sculpture--uncertainty-- hits its peak during composing time. 


When I look at history to find other artists' expressions of nows which enlightened, arrested and informed their contemporaries, I find “Guernica,” by Picasso, “The Terra Cotta Warriors” (by who-knows) and “Liberty Enlightening the World” by Bartholdi as examples of a now-connect in art.  Many others exist.  These describe fully the devastation, the fear, and the aspiration of their time.  Their fame in our time comes from "nailing it" in their time.       

So, what to do?  What to make of my now?  What DOES the world need?
​

I thought about this lots and discussed it late at night with my muse.  (The muse works overtime--no union.)  I plan a sculpture combining joy and despair together, a monumental contradiction, but, I believe, the essence of our time.
I never did this before, but I plan also to elicit your ideas as the sculpture progresses.  The idea resides in my head now, but I know that as it pushes out into designs and then permanence, it will take many turns.  Turns you can be part of.  In future letters I will describe more details, but for now, I envision a figure seated on a park bench in stunned despair while an etherial ballerina dances unseen behind both him and the bench. As sculptural permanence approaches, ideas will yield to form, and form to solid art, but along the way, I would love your ideas and help.  
After all, it is YOUR ’now,’ too.  

My dear friend Carolyn Alexander shared a writing with me.  A writing by Canadian Native American Elder Oriah Mountain Dreamer (her shamanic name).  It describes perfectly, the goal of my life’s journey.  Mind you, I said “the goal,” as each day I re-read this to remind me why I am here.  I am at a loss to write or deduct a word to improve this gentle bidding to be more than I am, so I will pass fragments along to you as her, and my, and Carolyn’s gift to you.  
The Invitation
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
And if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.


It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
For your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.  .  .


I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
To the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to
Be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.


It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
And if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.