In
back of my family home where I grew up was the Clay Pond,
which was in the middle of the Great Swamp, off limits to
young boys in search of adventure. "If you go in there
you will never find your way out," I was told. The
Clay Pond was a small hole, about 8 feet in diameter. If
we dug deep enough with our hands through layers of mud
and muck, our arms extending all the way so that the muddy
water splashed our cheeks, we reached the mine of blue clay.
I would scoop out a handful of the treasure, sit for magical
hours on a rock away from snakes and snapping turtles and
make objects of wonder, leaving them in the sun to dry and
bake.
Some
of the themes that interest me in my sculpture are the voiceless
calling out, the lonely seeking welcome, the oppressed demanding
justice, and the outcast and beaten living by enduring another
night and another day. And then there are those who sing
and embrace, and those who dance and dance and dance. I
want to work my hands into those moments in life when incredible
transformation is taking place.
While
I am interested in these themes, I am a sculptor, fascinated
by the three dimensional interplay of line, mass, shape
and space. I may start with an idea that I want to develop
but I quickly move into the challenge of how to create a
sculpture that comes alive for me. A graceful line, an unusual
balance, a twist or tilt of the mass that reaches towards
some unexpected resolution are aspects of my sculpture on
which I carefully work.
I
can sense the moment in each finished sculpture when suddenly
a mere lump of sticky dirt comes to life. Suddenly there
is dialogue. Suddenly I am humbled by what I am being shown
and where I am being led. Alas, my studio shelves are crowded
with wonderful ideas that are absolutely dead as sculptures.
Dead now, but always awaiting the miraculous transformation
into life. I cannot fathom why it is that I seem unable
to breathe life into these lifeless shapes.
Somehow we are simply not yet ready for each other. Such
is life and the challenge of it all.
My
hands search towards the great questions of the spirit and
lead me "by another way" in the direction of the
unknown, the not yet, and the mysterious. There are many
questions that are stimulated by my creating: What does
the Creator have to do with our creativity? What is the
relation between the deep creature
passions of our senses and the sacred? Does our creativity
make any difference to ourselves, to others, or to God?
How does creativity affect the healing process of us, of
others and the world? Restless hands and a soft hunk of
clay call out to each other from across the abyss for answers
in visual form to those questions that are often too deep
for words. When I discover in chiseled walnut or textured
bronze a shape, a space, a mass or a texture that lives
for me, answers to the great questions of the spirit seem
to be revealed for a moment and it feels as if my cup overflows.
Gurdon
Brewster
www.gurdonbrewster.com
gurdonbrewster@aol.com
