RUINS, RAVAGES, & CEREMONIES DISCUSSION

The idea for Stele came when I was writing a short-story, “The Death of Jaime Snakekiller”. The story describes a secret, magical place, ala “Don Juan” (The Carlos Castaneda version), for the old man, Snakekiller. And I had been developing the idea of monuments in my doodles for a while now, like Manchester, shown here. The doodle became the blueprint for Stele.

Of course the development in my thinking that made Stele possible is what I would call the transition from Formalism to Narrative. Maybe even Classical to Romantic. I had not made
sculpture in years because of lack of space (at least for the way I work). So when I moved into a studio large enough to make sculpture, I began by making a piece I’d wanted to make for some time. Still, it was more a model for the much larger piece I’d envisioned, but whatever.

Problem was, as I was making the piece, I became bored with the ol’ Formalist notions I’d been trained in, so instead of making the ol’ formalist, structured sculpture I’d been wanting to make for so long, I made an ol’ formalist, structured sculpture with a coyote peeing on it.

So I was free to make art that some would, hesitatingly, so as not to offend me, call “dioramas.” To which I’d say, “Hell, yes.”

Stacheldraht (German for “barbed-wire”) is a more sinister version of Stele. The aggressive nature of some of the creatures, and even the plants, as well as with the barbed-wire surrounding the monument, give it an air of hostility. In Stacheldraht, the coyote isn’t just loping along, as in Stele, but is fleeing. And the nature of the material, melted plastic, used to create the animals gives them that sort of zombie look we’ve all become accustomed to in the movies over the past few years.

Stacheldraht began as a doodle, then was further developed in the computer.

The various plants and critters are made of plastics heated and shaped. I used plexi scraps, plastic spoons, plastic soda bottles, and coffee cups.

ObseqScura is the third piece in the Temple/Ruins series. But whereas the first two, Stele and Stacheldraht, show man-made structures abandoned and re-populated by strange critters and plants, ObseqScura is active with the original participants, albeit, not very human.

It is a scene in which a gnome-like priest presides over a sacrifice to some amorphous entity – the cloud – in an arid environment and on a structure of some religious significance. It is dark, elemental, and primitive. It reminds me of The Dark Crystal, an animated fantasy film with good guys and bad guys. See if you can figure out who the good guys and the bad guys are.

It began as a doodle, as most of my work does. The idea of using blocks, columns, different levels, weird creatures, and hanging things had been explored previously in other drawings. The “smoke” rising was new, however.