Murmuring Of An Artist

For two years I have been writing this book “Bringing to Life the Spirit of the Deceased- A Sculptor’s Journey” I have taken a close look a the four commissions documented within the book. Now I have this posthumous commission of Mr. Hockett. It feels funny not to be documenting it. After two years of paying such close attention I feel like somehow Mr. Hocket is being excluded, not a part of the process. I am back to doing what I do in the process without much consciousness of it.

IT does not help that the commission is on a tight deadline. I have no time to ponder. I think Patsy, Lucas, Dick, and Jeanine came to me in those times between. The time spent doing something else, the place that thoughts linger. With such a quick deadline I lose the ability to linger. Does that affect the process?

Few photographs. I cringe at this process without numerous photographs. At one point I even said to myself, “perhaps I will not take any more commissions without many photographs.” My supply in this commission is limited. It not only ties my hands as a sculptor but also leaves me craving more emotionally from the subject. The photographs are what lead me to the personality and the emotion of the individual, with a limited supply the emotion is limited, which may in turn affect the sculpture.

Now that the deadline is looming, and no more photographs are available I pray. Mr Hockett, God, show me his peace. Ii think about the sculpture of Jeanine and remember that some of the photographs of Jeanine actually made me sick. When copying the eyes of one photograph I copied the pain, when another photograph was available I transferred that peace in the photograph to the sculpture. I wonder what has happened in the day the time of the photographs of Hockett? My client’s friend did not see the peace.

This is not a mystical process. My feeling of the emotions in the photograph even those emotions that may leak through is scientific and documented. I have an entire chapter on it in my book. Picking up these emotions is apparently one of my abilities. Sculpting and trying to make something beyond what is in the photograph is mystical.