Working Through Winter

It's been awhile since we updated this blog, busy times with lots of progress on the community supported sculpture. Alvin speaks:

I am far enough along on the sculpture that it is appropriate for me to personally update the blog. There are many who are becoming interested and involved with this Community Supported Sculpture Project.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to those in our community whose generous support is enabling me to survive and work. So many have affirmed the vision and purpose of this public sculpture to inspire imaginations to gratitude and reverent relationship with the spiritual in nature, here and now, within and without "As So Above and Below."
Thank you to the Earth Day organizers for introducing and identifying with this project. Thank you to the Community Art Fund for promoting and managing the administrative work. Thank you for sponsorship of the Kickapoo Cultural Exchange who accept and manage the tax-deductible donations.
It is so direct and simple, the ideal relationship between a public artist and community, speaking for and empowering each other in a spirit of co-creation. So I imagine myself and my audience in a noble conversation about ethical, beautiful, and mysterious relationships, in all scale and dimensions of Nature and in the Narure of the Divine.
So many images in pop culture compete for our attention and confuse our wisdom with the goal of capturing the creative potential, the power and magic of our collective imagination for an institutional or selfish purpose.
When this sculpture captures the imagination, it attempts to channel it to deep places in our common mystery, to provide an experience vicariously through these gestures that connect us. It works for me, a prayerful process that guides my intuition, my hands, and gives this art life and purpose.


The Making of the Sculpture
The craft of wood carving and the logistics of creating the piece are of much interest to onlookers and the story is worth telling.

I will speak to the problems and solutions of a physical nature in the creation of this piece. Understanding the physical aspects of the piece must serve the abstract, the intangible, the elusive spirit. I know from experience I will not find it in the wood if I do not feel it myself and keep my priorities straight. A perfectly executed model can be empty and dead if its only purpose is to show off craftsmanship. But craftsmanship is essential to increase the potential of art to express deeper meanings. One is drawn in through the senses, so with the concept and a design ready to execute, I chose burr oak or white oak because of its durability, carveability, and availability. I chose not to glue up milled lumber when we found an eleven and a half by four foot burr oak half log in which the standing figure perfectly fit. The wood had some obvious and hidden defects, and checking would be inevitable. However, the piece had many advantages that would be hard to find in another log, having stood dead for several years with the core somewhat hollow, taking much stress off the drying wood. It also was slabbed in half, allowing the form to fit the grain and have the entire carving on one side of the pith or core. Its discovery was magical enough and timing was right.

So I decided to get on with it and to work around and with the flaws and risks. It is an incredible piece of wood. With the log horizontal on a trailer, I did the major blocking out with a chainsaw. Burr oak is excellent, clean carving wood with mallet and chisel, and that's how I worked at public events last summer. To set up for ongoing work through the season, I had to roll the log and stand it up. I backed the trailer in line with a tree, and with pulleys, rigging, come-alongs and jacks, I rolled the log and pulled it off the trailer onto a base made of bolted timbers. I stood it up and lag-screwed it in place, then I constructed scaffolding that allowed me to work on three levels. Then began the roughing out of the sculpture with electric chainsaw, an angle grinder equipped with a disc of studded carbide and mallet and chisel. This goes on for a considerable time, the focus is on the elimination of crudeness and locating the center lines that thread through the anatomy. The figure will be discovered from within the block by a methodical process of elimination, by sneaking up on it from all angles at once. A beautiful figure is buried in layer upon layer of clothing. The outer jackets are thick wool, the inner ones are silk. They are removed one at a time. I often alternate and take a layer off with power tools to get smooth, graceful contours, then I will carve the abraded texture away with chisel and blade and get a tooled surface.
The directions of my strokes with either set of tools is in the flow of energy that animates the gesture. After a considerable time, the figure within begins to emerge. It comes with its own personality or presence. As I approach very near to the figure within, I am using smaller tools. The power tools that suit this scale are carbide bits. I use ball-nosed and cone-shaped bits. For hand tools, I use a wood rasp, a spoke shave, a scorp; I also use Sure Form tools. I think of my carving tools as drawing tools. I draw the contours and the light and shadow of form. There is very little calculated technique or process I can describe. I work intuitively, my hands are busy, my senses alert, and I carve while I contemplate the great mysteries of the universe as the spirit of the sculpture emerges before my eyes.
Carving in the winter is of great advantage when carving a solid tree, as moisture freezes near the surface and does not move in or out. The wood is sealed as I work. There is no surface checking. I will get very close to the finished form before spring, when the activations of temperature and humidity will threaten the integrity of the piece. I will then need to control the drying process by covering, shading and sealing the wood.

I am searching for another large piece of burr oak for the other figure. I need a piece approximately four feet through by eight feet tall, preferably dead for some time. I am ready to begin working the two figures in relationship to each other. In the finishing and presentation of the wood, there are many unknowns. I took a risk in carving such a mass of solid wood. I will control the drying process as best I can and research and experiment with finishes. I hope to make a presentation of this figure sculpture at the Earth Day event in Readstown April 22, and I will update this blog again following that event.
My goal is to be ready to unveil the finished piece Earth Day 2012 and enjoy the process. Thank you for your interest and support.

- Alvin