In doing an exercise from “The Artist’s Way” late last year, I identified a latent interest that I had never pursued: sculpture. I suppose it originated in my often-felt feeling on archaeological digs that excavation was a bit like sculpting, but with earth. The careful exposure of strata and features, and the emergent quality of the interaction between the dirt, the trowel or shovel, the eyes, the hands, and nose to produce vertical profiles and horizontal plans that could be “read”… I felt like I really got that old cliche about “liberating the form within,” or whatever.
I’m pretty sure the spark that got me started was an answer to one of Julia Cameron’s more delightful prompts, “what would you try, if you didn’t have to do it perfectly?” For me—among other things—that was sculpture.
I’ll surely have more to say about this as time goes on, but for now, I’ll just say that after realizing that I might like to try it, I let the idea of sculpture germinate for a while. I made some sketches and messed around with things that were lying around the house. But eventually, I got down to the business of pursuing sculpture as a deliberately practiced flow activity—or to be less pretentious about it—a hobby.
I began with the idea of wax. I have a lot of candles in my living room and so it made sense to pour some into a mold and futz around with it. From there, I got the idea to suspend little bits and bobs in wax and carve to expose the items, just like in an archaeological excavation. I’m still exploring that idea, but it hasn’t been as exciting to me as what I eventually hit on: wax mounted on galvanized wire. The wire I had lying around because I had purchased it some time before from the dollar store around the corner from my apartment, on a craft supplies trip that was, again, inspired by Julia.
At any rate, I wanted to share a few of my early experiments with these media and maybe I’ll leave my reflections on the process and what I’ve learned about creativity from trying sculpture for another time.
Here’s a selection of my first fourteen pieces.
W2021-WW-2
W2021-WW-3
W2021-WW-6
W2021-WW-9 & W2021-WW-10
W2021-WW-12
