I am a sculptor by training and predilection. I make sculpture, I draw like a sculptor (3D images, not flat composition), make prints like a sculptor (process process process) and paint like a sculptor (it's all about material). I do a lot of architecture and furniture, which is just useful sculpture. Still, my work is not just sculpture - lots of painting, etching, drawing. At first blush it might seem like a lack of focus. Not so. All my work has the same hand, same taste, same treatment; only the formats vary.

I don't talk much about my work: my work speaks for me.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Pool

Pool, 38" high, hide over wood, with fiberglass and steel.    I love to paint.   It is odd how we grow:  I draw and make etchings almost daily, but these are always figurative, from life, with considerable realism.   I paint weekly, but these are always abstract, painterly, and formal, nearly content free.   I make furniture and architecture, always well crafted, and make sculpture which is defiantly never well crafted. Don't ask me why this is so.   It has puzzled me for many years.
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Walnut and Nails, a southern tradition


I have made a figure at least once a year for nearly 40 years.  I do it whether I need the practice or not.  in 2008 - 2009 I carved this from walnut.  In the south folks drive many nails into walnut trees, saying it makes them bear better.  I carved this, and as my wife wanted another child, thought I'd best put the nails back in, you know, just to be on the safe side.  No, there was nothing sadistic or painful about it... it is just how they do things around here, with it being walnut and all....
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Yukiko Iichanko


Yukiko in cast iron, lifesize, with Japanese lacquers and rust.   I like Buddhist sculpture very much, but they are always male, or neuter.  I make mine as women, which seems fair enough to me.    I have made quite a few in bronze and wood, often using Yukiko as a model.  This is the only one in cast iron.   She is so delicate and refined; the contrast with the material - rough and rusted iron - is interesting to me.
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"Oshiri Hibachi" & "Sectional Buddha"


I cast bronze and iron every year or two or three, when I have gathered enough stuff and time to pull off a big pour, always a seriously home grown affair, furnaces made from drum cans and clay, fired with kerosene, and so on - I get real down home about it.    These are castings from my wife Yukiko, as is the iron figure above.   For me the alchemy of taking old bath tubs, piles of scrap copper, clay, coke, vacuum cleaners, etc., and converting it all into sculpture is a truly magical experience, magical save that it is such HARD work!
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Three Sisters





These three 'table top" figures were made along with several others in 2005 - 2007.   Indeed, a dozen or so variants exist, and I will make yet more.  They are of wood, with lacquers, metals and hide coverings. I usually do not make more than one or two of an image, as I like to keep my work fresh for myself, but I enjoy these as a theme and format.
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"Lips"


bronze lips on steel, 16" x 16" x 4", about 2005

The Chinese character for mouth is a square: lips are over a mouth, a visual echo, which is clever, but I thought of that years after I made it.   Most of my work just happens, born of controlled chaos from scraps in my studio, no method, no guru.
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Another Africa, 2010 or so........ebony, goatskins and nails


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