. Peter Adams

This is a story of creation in two parts. The first being about how an artist gets inspired by a found object and then finds the tools — and skills — to make visible the physical form that was the object. The second part relates to creation, as well, or more particularly about a certain mythical person’s birth, but it will have to wait for another day.

As for the first part, let me explain.

Most every morning my main ritual is to nestle down into a cushy wicker chair for a breakfast of toast, jam and coffee. During this hour of slowly waking to the day, I will read a verse or two of poetry as well as a chapter (well, maybe half a chapter) of a different book.

On the top of a book shelf next to where I sit is a small collection of various shells and rocks whose shapes and patterns I find intriguing. One, though, I have observed more than the rest and, during breakfast for the several years since I found it, I have marveled over its simple, yet exquisite lines and form. And always, I knew that one day I would translate this shape into a sculpture.

But before I could do this, I had to hold this slightly red stained shell form countless mornings until I embodied its shape; until that is, I was so intimately familiar with its every curve, nook and cranny that when it came time to replicate it (or, as they say in the design business, “scale it up”), I could do it blind folded.

This was similar in process to what Frank Lloyd Wright would do when he palmed spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones and pyramids with eyes closed in order to “feel” their volumetric body and, thereby, indelibly inscribe their physical characteristics onto his own consciousness. A knowing that helped him “sense” the shape his houses or other architectural renderings would become.

Well, the time to put chisel to wood has arrived. For the past three weeks I have been blocking out a small table top sculpture whose fundamental shape is based on my tiny friend. The photos only reveal the very beginning of what will eventually become a more complicated and fairly delicate sculpture.

In the coming days, within the emerging creation of this sculpture there will be a shape shifting into another story on creation. It is this creation story that I’ll write about in a month or two when ‘Ovum d’Aphrodite’ is completed.

And the small shell like form that has intrigued me for all these years? It’s actually the paper liner from a jam jar lid that fell out of the lid after washing and took its wonderful shape while drying.

One can never second guess where ideas or forms will show up.

{ 3 comments }

Three weeks ago in the October 24th blog entry of ‘Slow As’, I wrote about finishing the four tall components of the Buddha Bead poles. Now, the bases are completed and the four tall spindly poles can stand upright and heavenward.

The Buddha Bead poles were an adaptation of a DNA double helix spiral and the sea-grass found at Roaring Beach called Neptune’s Necklace (seen above photographed at low tide).

For the most part, my art is an attempt to show a sacred connection between Earth and Sky, body and mind, and, the physical with the spiritual.

Holding onto some Neptune’s Necklace is to sense the beads are more rosary than mere sea-grass.

Perhaps Buddha’s own rosary beads (of whatever material), if held underwater with one end released to float upwards to the light, could be comparable in looks to the floating Neptune’s Necklace.

Pressing either, my heart tells me, is to press the divine.

{ 2 comments }

Over five years ago in July of 2005 I finished three small sculptures I called “Still-a-Life” as a play on the phrase “still life” that is used to describe a painting of natural objects. The idea was to emphasize the notion that life is ever present even in apparently inanimate objects.

Then, to honour the physical beauty bestowed on humans through the process of growing older, and, to give additional meaning to Rilke’s writing on patience, I placed the carved bases of the three sculptures (minus the shells, stones and already weathered pieces of wood) outside directly on the ground beneath a tree. There they stayed through the years, through wind, rain, sun, heat, cold and insects, and slowly accumulated a fine layering of dirt, moss and a new patina on life.

…all progress must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.

To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life, in understanding as in creating.

There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing.

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of Spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. IT DOES COME!

But it comes only to the patient, who are there although eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide.

I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am Grateful: PATIENCE IS EVERYTHING!

Rainer Maria Rilke

This week, after lightly sanding and oiling the “aged” sculptures, I re-photographed them on my lawn. Maybe because it is that I’m well into my 60’s, but don’t they look richer now; more deeply beautiful; more alive even?

And…… what’s good for the artist is equally good for the gardener. This past week also had patience rewarded in another way: the harvesting of broccoli later steamed and ladened with butter. So, so tender. Oh, wow.

{ 1 comment }

It’s taken over two and a half years, but this week — with steely determination — I suffered through dusty eyes and the final 360 grit sanding of the last of four Buddha Bead poles and applied the first of several coats of tung oil to it.

Yes, the glossy, oily finish certainly looks luscious enough to eat before it gets wiped off and I’m totally satisfied with the end result, but what an emotional roller coastal trip for this sculpture from start to finish. (In actual fact, there is still the completion of the four bases to stand the poles in, but having finished the ten foot poles these bases will be “no sweat”.)

In March of 2008 I carved the first model of the Buddha Bead Poles and then set to work on the actual sculpture itself. But, as life would have it, the intervening years had me spending more time outside my little studio, than in it.

There was a large, ephemeral sand sculpture on the east coast of Tasmania, a relationship breakup, a 6 meter tall sculpture for Denmark, an emotional break down, five months of preparation for a series of lectures for Schumacher College in England, a rebuilding of my sense of self, and, twice around the world reconnecting with family, friends, colleagues and my sense of purpose. Travel time alone took nine months.

Needless to say,

despite the, at times, immense emotional pain experienced during these last two years, many invaluable lessons were gained about just who I am, what my limitations are, what steps I can take to lessen the impact on myself and others caused by my limitations, and, what I can genuinely offer the world through whatever skills I possess. Happiness, still elusive at times, drops down upon me often now.

And why? Basically, I have to parrot the Dalai Lama when he was asked how does one achieve happiness:

From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes.

Needless to say,

after a day of tough love, what really heals is a soothing soak in a tub of epsom salts and bath oil while an image of the Buddha casts his loving gaze upon me; gently guiding me into a meditation on what the Dalai Lama speaks while my mind floats up through the leaves and greets the clouds.

{ 2 comments }