Sculpture

In the Luberon area of southern France, there are limestone quarries. The stone sculptures depicted here were done in the limestone from one of these quarries. It is a relatively soft stone, that is, softer than marble. However, there can be ancient shells in the stone, which one has to be careful with when one is sculpting or else a fragment can snap off. I like details, and people would say to me that the stone wouldn’t take the details, and yet I enjoyed going ahead and
making details.
One can see such details, for example, in “The Crowded Couch” sculpture.

In contrast, working in clay allows for a delightful malleability and spontaneity. In childhood I created sculptures in clay. One inspiration was my grandmother, Olga Popoff Muller; during her years living in Paris she created beautiful sculptures in marble, stone, and plaster. When I was a small child, I could see many of these in her studio in Long Island, New York.

Years later, the structures and forms of the Luberon landscape led me to consider the farmers as “artists” of the land; the terraced hillsides and harmonious forms sculpted into a variegated terrain had an impact on my artwork and teaching, as well as on my involvement in Landscape Heritage. In the Art as Visual Language approach, there are concepts which engage one in a sculptural focus, such as in the “Groundworks” (3-dimensional dialogue on an earth ground), the “Gap” (becoming sensitive to the spaces between objects or between oneself and objects), and in
one’s visualizing of images. (See Teaching, and, e.g., “Basic-Format Carved as an Anatomical
Block…”, in Art as Visual Language; and Conservation.)

Here presented are 4 stone sculptures, and 4 clay sculptures, two prior to firing, and two fired pieces.
Dimensions of the sculptures are given as Height x Width x Depth (H W D), or just H.

“The Crowded Couch”, sculpture in stone of Lacoste, 3 views: H 16” x W 29.5” x D 9.5”

Large Couple in Lacoste Stone, 4 views: H 28.3” x W 51.5” x D 28.7”

The initial idea for this sculpture was that the two figures would be somewhat whimsical, with bird heads and human bodies, thus not a realistic figurative portrayal -- they would have wide shoulders and narrow down to a small lower torso area. However, as the autumn progressed and the weather got cooler -- some days when I went to the quarry to work, there was a thin layer of ice on the stone -- the sculpture became more serious, and the bird heads idea went away.

Whereas “The Crowded Couch” has two people intertwined, here I envisioned that the two figures, birds or eventually human, would be at a small distance from one another.

One can see a large scallop shell in the shoulder of the woman. It was necessary to be very careful in sculpting to not get too near it, or the whole shoulder could flake off.

“Pianist”, Sculpture in stone of Lacoste, 2 views:

Stone sculpture by brook, 2 views: 4.5 feet tall

The form of this sculpture had as origin a large painting, of the series “Canvas as Ground” (see Paintings.) It was especially pleasant working on the sculpture in a location in the landscape, by a brook. When sculpting the local limestone, the stone, freshly cut, is white, but when left some time outdoors, it acquires a gray surface. So a few years after sculpting the form, I carved lines into the surface, drawing on and into the stone.

Here shown are four of an extended series of small clay sculptures, whose dimensions are generally between some 6 to 8 inches tall. Two of the sculptures are seen here before they were fired, and two once fired. I like in the clay medium the pinching and squishing and sliding of the clay; the unfired pieces maybe show this tactile quality more, or differently, than the fired pieces.