Stone, Steel and the Protest Against War-III




When the newspaper headlines declared "Endgame" I did the last of these pieces, the fourth stone suspended by chain from three other stone piles. The next day we started the invasion. Not long after that Louise and I began the work on the camp in Vermont and the sculpture gods placed me on sabbattical for the duration of the spring, summer and fall.

My Father's Death


In the midst of the Stones and Steel War Protests, my father, aged 94, slipped into a coma as a result of renal failure. He hung on for an amazing two weeks, during which I worked on a rock assemblage with a bit more carving and interpenetration than the simple conjunctions of fitted wild stone which I considered protests. This piece felt like an exploration of my feelings about the family of my birth.

The day my father died, I went out to my stone workbench and did a simple piece of a single stone hung by chain in the carved gullet of another stone.

I have no idea if these pieces communicate to others my feelings of personal conflict and resolution. I have no idea if others would pick up from the War Protests the sense of intense resistance to destruction which I felt in doing them. In dealing with non-objective sculpture, it is probably enough that the piece capture, hold and communicate a sense of psychic energy. The meaning of that energy may well be irrelevant to the viewer, if it at least comes through the piece.

Mosaics


Somewhow the creative projects that Louise does at Christmas work their way into my aesthetic awareness and cause changes........ This year she found her way into mosaics...hotplates for the whole family. Mosaic supplies at the craft store are absurdly expensive, and she found her way into the pet store and its supply of colored fish tank gravel.......right on Lulu.

A walk on the beach brought home a collection of beach stone, and I began to play with them, sort of a do it yourself puzzle. Louise added the shells and beach glass. Not much good as a hotplate, but a neat wall piece.

The thought occured to me that the rocks in the Vermont woods could be worked to provide a field for mosaic work, so I took a piece of quartzite we had brought to Long Island from Vermont, and cut the channels for Louise to fill. Mirrors facing each other in the canyon of the carving produce infinity chambers within the stone. This piece feels like a map of a sacred site of the mind.

The granite piece was a collaboration from the start. We studied the rock in its wild state, concieved the modifications by diamond saw carving which I then did, and worked together to glue on the granite stones from the beach with latex grout adhesive..........Stay tuned.