When I last posted, I was deep into curating the flotsam my life and three or four former generations of my family.  The 40 boxes have been reduced to eight; pictures have been sent to be scanned (7,800 of 'em); and many questions about my forbears were answered.  Those of you chuckling now know that each answer creates eight questions.  

The oldest letter was from 1775. The sweetest find was four 78 rpm recordings of my grandmother (known as the Oklahoma Nightingale) singing from her barnstorming career as headliner for the silent movie circuit.  And then there were friends and family for whom the only physical remainder was in my hands.

Upon reentering my sculpture world, I carried forward curating.  Some of my sculpture experiments and intentions were great.  Others produced only the detritus of lost dreams, useless tools, aging materials and sincere written plans for great accomplishment.  Out they went, perhaps saving a memory token to puzzle whomever curates my leftovers.

I'm an experimenter and an innovator with both ideas and materials.  I started out in oil clay, then Terra Cotta (water clay), moved on to traditional lost-wax bronzes, experimented with plaster, researched ferro-cement, taught myself welding to create Flourishes, laid up fiberglass, learned to create new Swoopieprototypes with 3D technology, and most recently, moved to larger-than-life carbon fiber Swoopiesculptures.

My studio space reflected this meandering path through a whole forest of materials and techniques.  Eight large bookcases were crammed with anatomy, art, photography and painting reference materials. Boxes of wax dancer macquettes were nuzzled in along early bronzes of (can you imagine?) cowgirls. Steel pipe was leaning against prototype 3D prints.   My 3D printers sat among my hot wax tools.  You get the idea.  Picture every piece of clothing you ever wore draped somewhere in your studio.

Now, I've not read the book or seen the Marie Kondo series on The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  But one of those nearest and dearest to me (whose name shall remain--Deborah) suggested that I look at my melange of art paraphernalia with an eye to what gives me joy now.   

Not yesterday, not tomorrow.  Today.  Right now. 

So began the purge.  Fellow artists kindly relieved me of many of my reference materials.  Our high school art department was delighted to take the 2-D materials for its students. My fellow model railroaders are now enjoying all of those kits and scenery acquired for a bygone dream.  Duplicate power tools found a new home with those who need them to build habitat.  

It felt like I was giving away big parts of my life, but the parts were acquired for chasing a dream and--well, dreams change.  The rear-view mirror doesn't indicate where I'm going.  And I enjoy having uncluttered space.  It seems like every great leap forward in my life has started with a clean desk, and now it is real clean.  So look out.  Ideas are flowing faster than I can imagine their creation.  I am moving into major joy.  

Watch this space.  

As patriarch, I find myself the curator of my family history--all fifty boxes of the flotsam and jetsam that comprise my life (to now) and all my forbears. Each year, I set aside those mementos--cards, letters, faded pictures, report cards, hand drawn pictures, break-up letters--from 20 branches of the famtree.  I promised myself over years that I'd go through them sometime.  And now is sometime.

My eyes well up with tears of gratitude for the people who have loved me and mine, with tears of regret for the might-have-been or didn't do and tears of sorrow for the family and friends no longer there to share our lives and loves.  I've laughed at the funny letters, smiled at the joyful pictures and had glorious fun recounting the best embarrassing stories to my kids and grandkids.  Like a time machine, I can go back to my old (young) self and feel the anxiety of big-consequence decisions--some made with excruciating deliberation, some by random chance.

I came across a photo of my first sculpture show in Encampment, Wyoming.  I was unreasonably proud of making it to a "real" show with other "real" artists.  My work was raw--extremely elongated bronze and clay figures. Some were scary.  My booth was even more so--replete with white plastic shelves, beaded curtains and shiny stones.  What did I know anyway?  I am forever grateful to my across-the-aisle neighbor who kindly shared with me his elegant pedestal designs, which I use to this day.  

I remember a trip to Normandy, France, visiting the American Cemetery and being stunned walking among the grave markers to see that every row, rank and echelon pointed directly to me wherever I stood.  They all seemed to radiate--to me.  

I got that same feeling poring over my fragmented history.  Every knowledge, ability, experience, failure, love and pain has found its way into my sculpture today.  And I never saw it that way until now. ​

​I cannot stand still in my sculpture. My mind is constantly in "tinker" mode--what about thatmaterial? thatpose? thatnew idea? What else is possible?  How can I push the boundary just a little further?

My studio reflects this incessant quest for the next interesting thing.  It looks a bit like a laboratory experiment (or ten!) in progress. Boxes of materials from all over the world.  Resins of every imaginable combination. A tool for every occasion.  Dust, fiber, paint.  .  .paper on the floor to catch the over flow.  Piles of sculpture parts that didn't quite come out.  A birds nest of filament spilling out from a printer job run amok.  

Pre-emergent Bird's Nest sculpture

I have a love/antipathy relationship with my 3-D printers, which, at the moment, are behaving like recalcitrant toddlers--spewing parts, fiber, and glass build-plates to the floor as they have the mechanical equivalent of a temper tantrum.  Still, I relish the flexibility of beginning with a rough 3D print and carbon-fiber layup for the finished sculpture.  A new-to-the-world combination that brings incredible new Swoopie sculptures that are strong and light weight at the same time--sculptures you simply can't make with conventional techniques


Most of you normal people would look at the mess and say, now that's a failure!  Instead, I see it as a success in progress.  Every one of my leaps forward has been just as messy, just as confusing, just as perplexing. So I keep tweaking, fiddling, conducting my post-mortems and reloading, because I know that soon.  .  .really soon, I'll create another sculpture ahead of the curve.

Nothing like a looong road trip (2700 miles) to give me the time to reflect on where my art has been, is and will be going next.  You might call it the ten year itch.  

For the first ten or fifteen years of my life as a sculptor, I'd placed about 1000 of my more traditional bronze pieces, mostly dancers, in a variety of settings throughout the world.  And suddenly, I felt the itch to change what I was doing.  Significantly change what I was doing...rapid and purposeful movement away from my then-current body of work.
  
Ten years ago, I started my current body of work which I called "Swoopies" to capture the elegance of the movement and the emotion in the moment.  They've been very well received (thank you patrons!) and I have continued to improve my creation techniques and experimented with new materials as I added a bit more detail--faces, hands, and the like.  

Sitting in my car, somewhere in those 2700 miles, I felt that familiar stirring of creativity...a yen to try something different...perhaps moving to a simpler style....fewer details...contemporary materials...larger pieces...creating sculpture ahead of the curve. 
 
In the Muppet Movie, there's a delightful song featuring Kermit and Fozzie about their road trip--"Movin' Right Along" ...it captures where I am and I thought I'd share it with you.  It goes like this:

"Movin' right along in search of good times and good news
With good friends you can't lose

This could become a habit
Opportunity knocks once let's reach out and grab it
Together we'll nab it

Movin' right along 
Footloose and fancy-free
Getting there is half the fun
Come share it with me"  

I hope you do come along...and share it with me.  There's a lot more to come!
​

"Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself." -- Miles Davis

Myself.  Hmm. Not to brag, but I am unique.  You are too.  I occupy my own place, my own time, and have learned my own truth--though I'm still working on that truth part.  Maybe you are doing better on those than I, or maybe time, place and truth contemplation gives you a headache. 
I sculpt (. . .therefore I am) and I insistently seek my personal self-sound, my truth.  Starting out, I tried everyone else's sound--Michelangelo, Rodin, Giacometti. . .because I was just learning the scales.  Might as well try to sound like someone good.

A funny thing about making art.  However good a copier you are--there is a chunk of "you" in your copies.  With more time, more you.  Until you find yourself faced with--you, all you, and you understand what Miles was talking about.

My time. My place. My truth.  My little dot on sculpture's timeline is amazingly complex.  Michelangelo could draw on religious allegories everyone understood while using sculpture materials and techniques everyone knew about.  Same with Rodin. His allegories appeared in Dante's "Inferno" and all the techniques he used had been taught in school for centuries. 

My "time" is complicated.  Yours too.  While my forebears had a rich institutional encyclopedia of agreed-on concepts, views and metaphors, my "time" is both disappointed in, and rebelling against, institutions.  Old ways are being challenged and people are dividing on issues and dividing again and dividing again into splinters which can't even agree on a set of facts to argue over.  Institutions become just part of the argument, not part of the answer.
Technology in my "time" has given me abilities never dreamed of by the ancients.  Form, calculation, execution--all new.  All are waiting to be explored and all are sitting ducks for the next technology and methods to disrupt them. Writing on cave walls was disrupted too, but it took 30,000 years.
​
 As a result, sculptors have changed from "singing to the flock" to "make your own kind of music."  And, while Mama Cass was right about individuality, I have to reject self-centered narcissistic art.  
 My focus remains on my greater posse.  What can I say--without words, mind you--that will resonate with you and our world?  I don't care to preach, just to evoke.  But I consider it my duty as a sculptor to make art of my time, place and truth.  To add my block to the cathedral of understanding, as best I can .

Then I saw it. Anyone dripping paint on canvas had to answer to Jackson Pollock. He was first. Anyone sculpting skinny rough figures had to answer to Alberto Giacometti. He was first. Anyone painting sexy flowers had to answer to Georgia O'Keeffe. She was first, and so on. First matters in Art. The rest is all second-hand.
 
It was then I changed my approach to magazines. I combed them closely to be sure nobody else was doing what I was doing and vice versa.   And man, there is a lot of sculpture out there to comb.  
 
The result of my search for The Art is the unexpected discovery of Me. Now I live in every sculpture.  Unavoidably now, my sculpture has me imprinted on it--everywhere.

Still, I have not done a self-portrait.  But then I am not 90--yet.

So, I was out by Evergreen Lake trying to walk off a few pounds when I spotted a couple approaching me on the trail. She held his arm as they tender-footed the light snow. Every step was a giggle, so I knew they were courting. His heroic arm braced her as she beamed her fascination in return. 
 
Suddenly the laughter ceased. I was spotted.

​"Good morning," they said as one. Happily, they did not add "Mister."
 
"Good morning," I replied as I passed, blissfully remembering what courting was all about.  Then I thought about Heisenberg. 

Those of us who suffer from left-brain poisoning do that. Werner Heisenberg discovered a quantum mechanics principle requiring half a Greek alphabet to write down. It applies to small particles and the difficulty of measuring them. Seems you can know the location or momentum of an atomic particle, but not both. 

How does this relate?
 
Well, I prefer the right-brain interpretation of the Heisenberg Principle (sorry, Dr. H). The act of observing something changes what is observed. Philosophers and psychologists love this. I watched it on the trail. Whether the couple changed behavior because of me or I changed my observation because of them is endlessly debatable. But something changed. It always does.
 
And then the ghost of Dr. H appeared a quarter mile later in the form of a different couple, this time accompanied by a smallish photographer. They were on a lower trail by the lake snapping what must have been engagement photos. Smallish Photographer was barking orders and directing the holding of hands and how to walk in step. The couple must have been very in love because they gritted their teeth and rolled their eyes in unison. There was born the Linke Principle: The act of observing something intensely destroys entirely what is observed.
 
So, how does this relate to my sculpture? Easy. 

Genuine emotion must be remembered from the flash of those unguarded moments when the observee is oblivious. "Smile for the camera." Never. "Pose like this." No chance. "Act natural." Won't happen.
 
Great sculpture comes out of that frozen moment when we are ourselves and nobody's watching. Or at least, we don't see them. Chasing and sculpting that moment challenges me and fills my every day. Thanks Dr. H.

Those of us who display at art shows get to know one another pretty well--even with only periodic visits with one another. My friend and international landscape photographer, Dennis Kohn,
took me under his wing five years ago at my first La Quinta (CA) festival and we became friends, much like performers who run off to join the circus. We visited at shows and shared our stories.

he circus called last month.  Dennis was a victim of the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa.  His cat made it out with him.  His parrot did not.  His house, belongings, photo equipment and 60 framed inventory photos turned to ash.  Judging from the photos, only dirt and one metal sculpture from his front porch survived.



I sent money to his Dennis's Go Fund Me Site and sat back to wonder what it would be like to lose all my stuff in a sudden ball of fire (I live in forested Colorado).  Dennis cuts a bright example for me, measuring the damage and moving ahead, but I wonder: How will he change?  How would I change?

I thought about artists and what their bare necessities might be.  I settled on 'intuition and an eye,' both of which Dennis still has.  For a sculptor, it may not even be necessary to have an eye, having watched videos of Zuniga in his last years, blind and sculpting huge terra cotta sculptures with just his intuition.  Still, I could not make a case that equipment or location matter that much.

Catastrophe presents opportunity for change.  Artists adapt all the time to better methods, broader ideas, whimsy and, yes, intuition.  I think Dennis will make it just fine.  We all will help.  

Would I make it?   Hmmm, I like to think so.  Maybe I'll get a cat.

I like it when people ask me, "Where do you get your ideas."   The question contains at least the implication that I have ideas and they are interesting. I feel good.
 
I've asked that question of myself often. Once I purchased the book Secrets of Magical Craftsmanship by Salvador Dali. Now THERE'S a guy with lots of ideas who is ready to spill his secrets. His secret?

As you sit in your stuffed chair, have your valet place your keys in your hand and a dish on the floor. Sleep. When the keys hit the dish, jump up and paint feverishly for an hour from what ever was in your dream. 
 
Okay, I handed my keys to Deborah, but was told, "I'm not your valet!" A setback, but I persevered on my own.

An hour later, the keys missed the dish but I jumped up and started squeezing clay feverishly.
Nothing.
Not even close to an idea. Just lumpy clay.

It dawned on me that Dali has his path to ideas and so I must have mine. Okay, Harold, answer: What's your path?
 
For me, ideas come from everything I have ever learned or done. While that sounds big, it actually limits me to only what I know. Eastern thought, African rhythms and bison instinct never play into my ideas. So I go with what I know.
 
Then I combine from those personal physical and spiritual ideas to draw the essence of a new idea--new to the world--a message in an idea, a metaphor.   It helps that I have self-diagnosed ADD. That lets me move through candidate ideas quickly. It also helps that I can comfortably picture things in three-space. I don't know if that can be learned, but happily, I've got it. I look to get a dozen or so ideas at a time.
 
Filtering comes next. Anything not joyful, thought provoking, attention grabbing or truthful, goes away immediately.   Next go the impossible ideas; flames as sculpture, weightless bronze, and live figures.
 
Then I actually take a page from Dali--sort of. I sleep on an idea.

Those of us of a certain age remember when hotels and rail-car sleepers included a small two-door box built between the room and the hall, one door to the room and one to the hall. Overnight, you placed your shoes in the box and the next morning they were cleaned and shined!  Magic!  Sort of.
 
I have a personal shoe-box for my current idea. I think about my idea and go to sleep. The next morning, magically, the idea has been cleaned and sometimes expanded, problems have been solved, opportunities pointed out, connections clarified.

No dreams seem to be involved, just wide-awake looking into last night's shoe-box to see what magic has happened.

Works for me, anyway.