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I have had the opportunity to meet to very well known artists who personally knew people like Picasso, Marino Marino, and Lipchitz.  After talking to these artists who have had a wealth of knowledge and experience and by just doing the craft I feel I have a better idea of what is art.  And when I say art I mean a work that goes beyond the current trend.  It is something that can be seen 500 years from now and be just as powerful.  It is not a political statement or something to shock people but something much deeper.

True art is the result of the search.  It is a process of trying to find answers to deep questions.  The artists that have survived the ages such as Picasso, Giacometti, Degas,  and Rodin all came to a point in their art where the search took over.  They went beyond the beauty of the model and beyond politics and into the realm of the human condition and searching for the answers we all face in life.  In essence it has turned into mythology where the art is a metaphor for experiences in our lives.

So my advice to those looking for art that will pass the test of time, find out why they are doing it.  If it is just for physical beauty or copying what they see or some big political statement most likely it will be forgotten.  True art is much deeper and very difficult to find.

Last Summer I was sculpting the two mountain lions at the zoo.  Depending on the week I would spend about 2-3 hours at the exhibit sculpting for about 3-4 days a week.  Sometimes it would be me watching them sleep and other times they were bouncing off the walls.  But the best time to see them is at sunset.  Over the course of the ten weeks I made several sculpture of the lions including a portrait.  I also studied the anatomy a lot including sculpting the cougar skull based on a replica I got from ebay.

The pieces I did gradually got better but I knew I could do better.  At this time the Zoo Nights ended and I went back to sculpting horses and people.  But now this year I feel I can start again fresh.  Over the last year I have thought a lot about the mountain lions and I feel I have a greater feel for them and can use their energy, power, and grace to make something special.  I am very excited about the new possibilities.

However sometimes there are pieces of art which actually does anger people when someone is trying to make legitimate art instead of political propaganda.  One of these times is very close to where I live in Cardiff, CA.  It is in the North County in San Diego and I actually run by this beach on a regular basis.  It is the statue of a surfer (see video below).  Technically there is nothing wrong with the anatomy or proportion yet it inspires such anger that it is constantly vandalized.  I used the word vandalized loosely, in that people dress up the statue in outfits ranging from a ballerina to Osama Bin Laden (no joke!).

So why the outrage?  The problem with the piece is that it attempts to describe something that is happening or a moment in time versus force behind it.  For instance when I used to surf and watch the people that did surf what I felt was a sense of freedom.  So if this was my commission I would be asking myself how do I use the image of a surfer to show freedom and I would make sketch after sketch to find this emotion.  The piece would match what surfers felt.  Instead this artist tried to describe someone surfing and the emotional impact was left behind.  So it ended up being a surfer falling down without much power or force behind it.  It does not match the way a surfer actually feels and hence the outrage.

I believe it is fine to show a story in piece of sculpture, but the emotion behind it must come first.  Everything else is just decoration.

I had the opportunity to study with Stanley a few years ago.  The things that he taught me really opened my eyes to a lot of things and answered a lot of questions.  He gave me tools that I am still using now.  While I studies with him I was constantly asking him questions and I always wrote down the answers that really struck a chord with me.  Here are some the things he told him taken from my notes, paraphrased.  We will miss you Stanley.

For movement you can’t just look on the sides and on top, you have to look from underneath also.  You must see your sculpture is space at all angles in your mind or the movement stops.  Marino Marini was the master of this.

 Many people can make beautiful copies of the models in front of them.  They are artisans and people appreciate their work.  But they are not artists.  You can’t let the model tell you what to sculpt, you decide how it should be, not the model.  Use your model like a dictionary.

One of the things I would like to change is that I say too much sometimes, I am too obvious.  Don’t show the viewer everything.  Let them decide what it means, don’t tell them. 

Like Rodin said, you sculpt from the inside out.  The life is at the center and it grows from there.

Sculpt what you don’t know what to do.  My best pieces came from ideas in my head and I had no idea how to sculpt them.  I worked and struggled with these ideas for a long time.  I failed a lot of times but the answer will come to you.  If you know how to do it, don’t it.

If you only sculpt what you see you are not telling the viewer anything and you are wasting your time.  Let what you see work through you and come out in a way that is unique for you.

Some people like to sculpt muscles.  Michelangelo liked to sculpt muscles.  If you like to do that that is great.  But if you don’t want to sculpt muscles then don’t do it.  It doesn’t really matter. 

Putting on a single piece of clay is an artistic statement.  Sometimes I will put the clay on horizontal and then I will change to putting it on vertical because the light hits it differently.  Always ask yourself how light will hit it.

I have had a lot of things go wrong and made a lot of mistakes.  People told me what I was doing wasn’t art.  That told me art was something different.  But it is through this that I made the best work.

I learned my reliefs from Manzu.  He was the master of low reliefs.  I tried to copy Rosso in my portraits. 

You have to get to the essence of something and be able to feel what it is.  I like Floyd Dewitt’s horses because they feel like horses to me.

 If you are going to do the flowery stuff, the commercial work, then you might as well do something else.  Then it becomes just a job, it is useless and means nothing.  You may be surprised at how people like your art when you do what you want to do.

 Copy Marino Marini.  You should get a feel for his work, it is a starting point.

 I didn’t start sculpting until I was 35, age doesn’t mean anything.

 I like Italy because sculpture is seen there and has a special place.  You rarely see sculpture in the United States.  In Italy you never see a sculpture with grafitti on it.  You will see a church with it, but not a sculpture.  It is sacred.

 I can’t tell you when to stop or how to know when your piece is finished.  You just feel it.  But the biggest mistake you can make is when you don’t know what to do and you do something just to do something.  Just stop and come back later.

 Terra cotta is the best medium to sculpt with.  It is from the earth.  It says what plastilina cannot say.  Sometimes I will not cast things in bronze because I know in bronze it would lose it effect.

Then I thought about what is an angel. I reasoned an angel would be fighting evil and demons all day and would be battle hardened. The angel would have thousands of years of struggle and still fights on. I ended up doing a portrait of an angel or at least my version of one. Here it is:

I already had an idea what I wanted to sculpt. I had been thinking about the idea I wanted to express and made many small models trying to capture the best pose to express this idea. It was about being on a long journey and looking over the abyss and having enough faith to move on knowing you will reach your destination. It is a prequel to my “Top of the Mountain” piece and the second of what will be a three piece series. I used the horses on the ranch for inspiration and anatomical reference but the overall sculpture was what I had envisioned months earlier. I decided not to post a picture of the clay model and wait until the bronze is complete. It always looks much better in the bronze. Now I am working hard on the third piece of the series working out the pose and gesture. I already have a trip planned for Montana in June where I will be on another ranch with wonderful models.

In this case I was sculpting from life on a ranch near Bozeman, Montana last Summer. There were several horses there but one horse named “Dancer” was very playful and friendly while the other horses could not care less. I focused on this beautiful quarter horse while I sculpted and I connected with the horse. It brought about a very joyous feeling which could not be put into words. But I tried to capture it in clay and this bronze is the result. It was cast at a top rated foundry in Montana with an excellent reputation for quality and integrity. Overall I am extremely happy with the result. When I look at this piece I still feel a sense of that joy and I hope that others can feel at least some of this from the piece.