The inside of my sculpture creates the outside . . . and the outside creates the inside. I never knew how this enigma would play out in my life.
I sit cocooned from our world turning upside down, working in my sculpting bubble. Outside lie the breathless hour-to hour-reports of the just-revealed diagnosis, the somber escalating statistics, the terrifying unknowns. Things will be different, but how? Friends will be sick--possibly dead--but who? Institutions will fail, but which?
I spent the last six weeks quietly sanding my newest four creations in my new studio: a solitary pursuit that feels almost meditative. Sand the inside, sand the outside. Recoat, repeat. I get to intimately know each curve and move…many times.
I keep thinking about inside and outside.
This inside/outside enigma draws my sculpture’s witness closer.
This same enigma draws our world closer. We marvel at all the ties that bind us to those-we-do-not-know, in worlds we cannot fathom, speaking a language we do not understand. We are all connected in ways we do not completely understand. We live in an interdependent global community in a country with a fiercely individual nature. Yet, what one of us now has the capacity to go it alone?
Social distance makes us alone, our common needs unite us. Inside and outside.
Sculptors point us to new ways of thinking. It’s in the job description. My sculpture (I say ‘my’ because no one else makes inside/outside Swoopies) tells the story of how inside becomes outside, of how we continually reconcile our two worlds, of how what lies inside us can affect the world, of how all the curves eventually become circles.
We found new heroes and heroines in our medical workers. We will never undervalue our teachers, our grocers, our farmers, our truckers, our delivery people . . . or for that matter, anyone again. They are outside us and inside us and we in them (even if only virtually).
Embrace your circles, and stay healthy.
I sit cocooned from our world turning upside down, working in my sculpting bubble. Outside lie the breathless hour-to hour-reports of the just-revealed diagnosis, the somber escalating statistics, the terrifying unknowns. Things will be different, but how? Friends will be sick--possibly dead--but who? Institutions will fail, but which?
I spent the last six weeks quietly sanding my newest four creations in my new studio: a solitary pursuit that feels almost meditative. Sand the inside, sand the outside. Recoat, repeat. I get to intimately know each curve and move…many times.
I keep thinking about inside and outside.
This inside/outside enigma draws my sculpture’s witness closer.
This same enigma draws our world closer. We marvel at all the ties that bind us to those-we-do-not-know, in worlds we cannot fathom, speaking a language we do not understand. We are all connected in ways we do not completely understand. We live in an interdependent global community in a country with a fiercely individual nature. Yet, what one of us now has the capacity to go it alone?
Social distance makes us alone, our common needs unite us. Inside and outside.
Sculptors point us to new ways of thinking. It’s in the job description. My sculpture (I say ‘my’ because no one else makes inside/outside Swoopies) tells the story of how inside becomes outside, of how we continually reconcile our two worlds, of how what lies inside us can affect the world, of how all the curves eventually become circles.
We found new heroes and heroines in our medical workers. We will never undervalue our teachers, our grocers, our farmers, our truckers, our delivery people . . . or for that matter, anyone again. They are outside us and inside us and we in them (even if only virtually).
Embrace your circles, and stay healthy.
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