water and sculpture
Wanting to soften and humanize the austere appearance of a new facility for homeless families, the benefactors of the Orange County Rescue Mission in Tustin, Calif., commissioned an unusual watershape. The idea pulled watershaper Mark Holden and project manager Jim Bucklin into a whirlwind in which they had to create unique systems to accommodate the world’s largest ceramic amphora – and do so within an extraordinarily tight deadline. What happens when one of the country’s wealthiest philanthropists provides funding for a truly unique art piece in support of a favorite cause? The short answer is, everyone jumps to make it happen. That was literally the situation when a nonprofit organization that serves the needs of homeless families received a donation from its largest benefactor to fund construction of an unusual fountain system. The waterfeature, we learned, was to support the world’s largest amphora, which at that time was just being completed by a Danish artist. Destined for the courtyard of a new facility about to be
As a sculptor, I always seek ways to use my work to create positive (and sometimes intellectually challenging) experiences for those who have the opportunity to see what I've done. In my case, most of the time I'm not trying to make direct, narrative or literal statements. Instead, I seek to conjure feelings of fascination that lead to appreciation and enjoyment: You don't necessarily have to understand the forms I create to walk away from them with good feelings. When I have the opportunity to work in public settings (as was the case in the project featured on these pages), I'm stimulated by the idea that large numbers of people will be exposed to my sculpture and that, in many cases, those people will be exposed to what I've done over and over again because they'll be passing by at least twice each day as they go to and from their jobs in adjacent buildings. In this case, I was working next to an office tower in Century City - a famous business and entertainment district near downtown Los Angeles - which meant that thousands would repeatedly be walking right past my work and would come to accept it as part of their daily lives. In that light, I see art set amid architecture as a permanent commitment, as a cultural reference that has the potential to resound for generations. This recognition fills me with a heightened sense of
As a sculptor, I always seek ways to use my work to create positive (and sometimes intellectually challenging) experiences for those who have the opportunity to see what I've done. In my case, most of the time I'm not trying to make direct, narrative or literal statements. Instead, I seek to conjure feelings of fascination that lead to appreciation and enjoyment: You don't necessarily have to understand the forms I create to walk away from them with good feelings. When I have the opportunity to work in public settings (as was the case in the project featured on these pages), I'm stimulated by the idea that large numbers of people will be exposed to my sculpture and that, in many cases, those people will be exposed to what I've done over and over again because they'll be passing by at least twice each day as they go to and from their jobs in adjacent buildings. In this case, I was working next to an office tower in Century City - a famous business and entertainment district near downtown Los Angeles - which meant that thousands would repeatedly be walking right past my work and would come to accept it as part of their daily lives. In that light, I see art set amid architecture as a permanent commitment, as a cultural reference that has the potential to resound for generations. This recognition fills me with a heightened sense of
When people ask me how long it takes to create one of my sculptures, I sometimes like to answer, "My whole life." I've always loved art and started collecting it while still in high school, but I never imagined in those formative years that I'd become an artist myself. After all, I have no formal training, and to this day I can't draw - not well, at any rate. My first career was as a computer programmer, my second as a marketing consultant - both distinctly sedentary occupations that led me to seek something physical to do in my spare time. For whatever reason, I decided to try my hand at sculpting stone, crafting a few rough pieces and taking pleasure mostly from the hard work they involved. Right from the start, however, people
When people ask me how long it takes to create one of my sculptures, I sometimes like to answer, "My whole life." I've always loved art and started collecting it while still in high school, but I never imagined in those formative years that I'd become an artist myself. After all, I have no formal training, and to this day I can't draw - not well, at any rate. My first career was as a computer programmer, my second as a marketing consultant - both distinctly sedentary occupations that led me to seek something physical to do in my spare time. For whatever reason, I decided to try my hand at sculpting stone, crafting a few rough pieces and taking pleasure mostly from the hard work they involved. Right from the start, however, people
I'm particularly interested in the behavior of water. To me as a sculptor, differing water flows and their textures are like "colors" to a painter: I find a color that holds meaning for me and then look for a structural form that can present it. To this extent, my artistic medium is the behavior of water and the means to make it behave. The sculpture in this case is water combined with a structure in steel, stone and equipment. The work is abstract: abstractions of feelings related to the movement of people, animals, fish and the flows of water in streams, rivers, rain - even the flow of numbers. As a result, I need metaphors and feelings to drive my creative expressions, then use water and other sculptural elements in much the same way a choreographer might use line and gesture to express a feeling or a composer will use chord changes and musical phrasing. My hope is that, in creating forms that are meaningful to me, other
Watershaping advanced by leaps and bounds from 1999 through 2004 – a journey of artistry…
The avant-garde composer John Cage once said, “Art exists to make us aware of the very life we’re living.” I’ve always loved that statement because, as someone working to create works of art, the experiences of my own life have naturally been transferred into the way I’ve chosen to express myself – and, I hope, have enabled me to succeed in bringing other people to an awareness of experiences in their own lives. For me, water is the key in these transferences: Even though I’m probably more often described as a sculptor of natural stone rather than as a watershaper, the dialogues I have with the materials I use and with those who observe the outcomes have always begun with the way I work with water. I grew up in the Midwest on the banks of the Mississippi. As a child, I lingered on the untamed shores of the creeks, streams and rivers that laced across an otherwise developed and thoroughly mechanized landscape. I would read or draw, stroll idly along a stream, or spend hours building a raft or dam. This was well before I’d begun to think about my relationship with water in any sort of artistic way, but there’s no question that those experiences remain at the heart of my passion for working within this
