Mountain Spell - Monumental Flourish
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One Saturday, I awoke to a crazy thought. Instead of creating flamboyantly active sculpture, what about making a sculpture of someone the opposite—quiet, self-absorbed, not really there. I put that idea away with my other weird ideas, alongside the dancing jigsaw puzzle sculpture or the hang-from the ceiling fan sculpture. Still, this idea kept on through my shower, my chores and breakfast. It even came back that night as I turned in for the day. I struggled with how to be peaceful and serene without being boring and flat-footed. I slept on the idea, whether I wanted to or not, and an idea came to me. Years earlier I studied life in Paris in 1880 to 1910, the time when artists from France, Russia, Japan, Australia, Norway, England, Sweden and even America all converged on Montparnasse in perhaps the most productive artistic time since the Renaissance. Almost every artist biography or history of that time mentions visiting American Isadora Duncan, the laid-back, chin-up barefoot dancer who entranced French audiences and sculptors, among them Rodin and Bourdelle. My turn now. I chose to sculpt her in a trancelike pose. A still photograph inspired me, though she prided herself on insisting that her every movement was born from the one that preceded it, that each movement gave rise to the next, and so on in organic succession. Perfect for me. My job was to find the stillpoint gesture in that progression which contains its past, present and future. Mountain Spell sculpted itself. As did Isadora in her dance, I started with the solar plexus and allowed all else to derive from that, a beautiful gesture of peace and joy guided by her hands--and mine.c. 2018-20 Alamosa Colorado Sculpture Walk 2016 Loveland Colorado-The Art Advocacy Project Medium: White Steel Height: 144 inches Base: 18 inch Circular Steel |
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