SCULPTURE CLASS #6

Here are photos of my latest sculpture. It is interesting to do this - it takes so much thought and concentration (actually more like concentrating on NOT thinking). There is a guy in my class who hardly looks at the model and he is frantically working hard at making a head. He gets all the things right - the neck, the cranium, the eye sockets, the nose, but it doesn't ever look anything like the model. It reminds me that it is the most powerful tendency - to not look but to assume. To know what a nose basically looks like and put it in the middle of something that looks like a face.


This reminds me of our first day in class, our first model was a small black girl with very interesting, ethnic features. At the end of the day when we all lined up our heads - we saw ourselves! Lee, our teacher, told us this is a very natural thing for people to do because it is what we are most familiar with - our own head. How could I make my own head when I'm looking at a small, black woman? The answer is obvious - I wasn't looking at all.


The beauty of every stinking one of these classes is that this very idea is drilled into us over and over and over again. Sculpt, draw, paint exactly what is there and as Clintel says, 'No lying'. It is truly amazing, and I prove it to myself over and over again when I do that, when I don't second guess, when I emphasize one thing over another, when I leave something out that doesn't make sense to me (what is that thing?) the final product is nice but it doesn't really work. If I forget "things" - table edges, corners of fabric, stupid yellow plastic tulips, and make what is really there, what I really see and leave my 'labeling' brain out of it - it comes together like a jigsaw puzzle and I marvel that dang, this really works! And as the observer, I don't look and label all those "things", making a mental list of 1. yellow tulips, 2. edge of table, etc., but as a composition, it all makes sense and I'm not left standing in front of this thing wondering what's off? I don't care how beautiful the colors or the brush strokes - it has to work. My brain must be able to makes sense of the composition and move smoothly and freely around it without the jolt of running up against something that makes me stop and scratch my head.

Once I have this figured out, I may just do that purposely but I believe it will only work if I understand the basic order of things first. I hope I live that long.