Setting Poetry and Music to Stone Sculpture
Creating a stone sculpture is a long process. For example I spent almost 2000 hours completing Trinity, a life size modern Greek goddess. Smaller pieces and abstract sculptures generally can be completed more quickly. In either case, I often will have plenty of time to construct poems about my pieces while I am sculpting. Now, with AI music generators, such as suno.com, I am able to set these poems to music. This blog is where I will share some of the music and poetry I have written in association with my sculptures.
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Trinity- a journey in stone
In 2012 I decided it was time to proceed to a life size work, a modern Greek goddess. Speaking with my stone supplier, Myles, he suggested pure white sivac marble from Greece. In May, 2012, a 2541 pound block arrived. I photographed models, experimenting with different poses. Choosing one, I drew it onto the stone as well as a thin piece of plywood from which I cut forms to use for reference along the way.
The process of sculpting her took three years, working first with large, powerful right angle grinders, then normal size grinders, then files, and fine mallets and chisels for the details of her face. Her drapes became artistically plausible extrapolations from my photos.
The finishing process of filing and sanding was quite exciting as the final form and textures emerged. My three year journey in stone was completed!
working on Trinity in my studio
School of Jacks
This painting was inspired by a dive in the Galapagos Islands where I swam right into a school of hundreds of silvery jacks. What an eerie, disrupting, exciting feeling to be in the midst of this pulsating mass of living creatures! My photos reminded me of an Escher painting where a school of fish becomes a flock of birds and back again. I started the painting with a few well defined fish, amping up the colors into a palette of blues, greens, and violets, and adding in many less defined fish bodies and faces. Again, this painting worked because of the energy and freshness I had in painting it rapidly.
Coral Queen
One of my early figurative sculptures, Coral Queen represents a mermaid lying on the shore at water's edge. She rests oin her arms and her body twists onto her left hip. Is she real or a fantasy of my imagination? Listen to find out!