Sculpture at the River Market in Little Rock, Arkansas

This last weekend I was in Little Rock, participating at the Sculpture in the Park Show. This was the fifth annual show. It is a very well organized show with 44 nationally well known artists participating.  It was an honor to be surrounded by so much talent in one small place on earth. To name a few: Clay Enoch who owns a talent that diffuses from every single piece of clay he touches. And Jane DeDecker, whose work I have been admiring since I came across her work in a Santa Fe Gallery years before I have even started sculpting.

 

The people of Little Rock are extremely supportive and nice.  It was a pleasure to watch the constant change of expressions coming forth over their faces while looking at my sculptures.  What is also interesting and informative for me is getting their opinions which they share without hesitation.  Since sculpture ideas evolve in my mind for a long time until after they become real they become like good friends to me.  When I finally create them I have a feeling of love for them. So hearing about them is like learning about a new side of a close friend’s personality.

It was the first time I released many of my sculptures at the show. The Depths of Mind of a human figure representing remembrance of our pasts was the most recent one. Reminiscence about events, people, and places in the past is similar to going down into a hole with a rope with this piece. Consciously or involuntarily we retrieve some essence of our past from the depths of mind.  What we can gather help elucidate our personalities.  One visitor said it reminds her of the saying she uses quite a bit: Tie a nut to the end of the rope when you are at the end of it” meaning hang on as much as you can when you are going through difficult times. 

Another viewer pointed out that the timing was very good for this sculpture with all the ongoing demonstrations driven by the anger over unprecedented levels of social inequality.  Three years after the financial meltdown on Wall Street, unemployment and declining wages persist and deepen alongside record profits and increasing wealth for the top one percent. A person’s fear looking down to an unknown future can also be seen in my figure’s face with a completely different point of view.

Picasso has once said: "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."  My soul after seeing all this beautiful works of art this weekend is now fresher.