I have always love to read, particular sea stories, which is one of the reasons I joined the US Navy at 17 (Star Trek, which also dealt with ships and exploration, also had a major impact on my decision). One of those sea stores that fascinated me was Moby-Dick. I loved the Huston movie and watched it many times as a young child in Massachusetts. After leaving the Navy and graduating from UC Irvine, I decided to tackle Melville's masterpiece. However, while reading it, I noticed some fascinating references and symbols that Melville appeared to have deliberately placed within key areas of the book. Those references and symbols appeared to speak of race and the turbulent times that Melville was immersed in (such as the Compromise of 1851). That revelation then led me to start researching the book further, and while at UC Irvine's graduate program in fiction, I ran my ideas by Distinguished Professor J. Hillis Miller. He found them fascinating and he encouraged me to write a book on them. I took his advice and spent several years researching the book. However, just after finishing an early draft of it in 2007, I had to put it down for a long time while I fought a battle with cancer and then chemo. Many years later, after moving to Boston, I met up with Professor Victor Mair for lunch at Harvard square in Boston and he asked to read my unpublished manuscript. To my surprise, he let me know that he really loved the book and he then encouraged me to submit it for publication. Which I did. The book was eventually accepted and published by the academic press Palgrave Macmilllan in NY. Professor Miller then wrote the Forward to it. The title is Moby-Dick and Melville's Anti-Slavery Allegory and it received an amazing peer review (which you can read in my writing section of this website).
Furthermore, that book on Melville turned out to be a small part of a much larger research project that I started many years ago that dealt with the origins of the idea of the Word made Flesh (seen in the biblical Parable of the Sower). That research, in turn, soon led to 6 papers that were published in the academic journal Sino-Platonic Papers, which is edited by Professor Victor Mair at the Univ. of Penn. All of the papers deal with the origins of the alphabet (I correlate the 22 Phoenician letters to the zodiac), as well as with the origins of the idea of the Word made Flesh (starting with the Egyptian creator god Ptah, with its rudiments going back to the Paleolithic caves of France, such as Chauvet).
That same research then soon led to a book on Shakespeare, which I'm finishing up right now. It deals with the identity of the mysterious youth and mistress of the sonnets -- and above all else, his apparent Catholic background and pro-Catholic writings (a sensitive topic today, particularly as the evidence accumulates on this).
I'm also interested in fiction, and have written a novel called The Siren Sea, which is based on my 4 years in the US Navy working on nuclear weapons. An early version of the book got me into both the Iowa MFA fiction program (the number one graduate writing program in the country) and into UC Irvine's MFA program. I chose Irvine's, as they offered scholarships and teaching (plus I got to work with Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List). While at Irvine, I wrote a collection of short stories that were based on my two years aboard the USS Midway in Japan. In addition to my fiction, I soon plan to work on an autobiography and children's stories. I have written a few children's stories already, and I plan to illustrate them as well.
In 1996, after I graduated from UC Irvine's MFA program, I moved to San Juan Island in Washington. While there, I was fortunate to meet the brilliant sculptor Chris Mikulasek, who taught me traditional bronze sculpting. I have always had a passion for art, and I have loved drawing since I could remember. In fact, in 4th grade at Stacy Memorial Elementary School in Milford, MA, my art teacher walked into class one day and asked that I follow her. Everyone thought I was in deep trouble. So did I. However, it turned out that she just wanted me to draw pictures -- anything that came into my head. So I sat in a small room and just drew what I wanted -- a picture of a garden with crayons, a picture of colored fruit, and more importantly, a picture of an old Navy sailing ship with colored magic markers (you can see these in my "Other Art" section of this website). It was only later that I remember walking with all the other school children into town and then to my utter surprise, seeing my drawings displayed on the wall for a local art show. Seeing my ship up on the wall with my name on it was very exciting. And little did I know then, but that fourth grade Navy ship sailing to unknown parts of the world was but a small window opening out into my later teenage years -- for I dropped out of High School at 17 (never going to 12th grade) and joined the US Navy. And because I graduated first in my Navy "A" school class (Nuclear Weapons Training Group Pacific), I was allowed to be the first person to pick the available billets, and without hesitation I chose the aircraft carrier USS Midway in Japan. I don't think I was ever so excited to go anywhere in my life. I would soon have the chance to get on a real ship that would sail me to the far parts of the world. A 4th grade dream come true. However, the stark reality of naval sea life and the experience one gained in visiting various parts of the world soon tempered one's passion. But I still clung to it as best I could -- even far out at sea in the middle of the Indian Ocean during the Iran Crisis of 1979, I got to put my drawing skills to use. I drew the division's Christmas Cards, as well as other illustrations for myself and others (many of them have been donated to the USS Midway Museum Library). And while sailing in the Indian ocean, I even attempted my first photo-real drawing of a great white shark -- completed in W-Division's tiny storeroom (you can see this drawing in my "Drawings" section of this website). While next serving on Guam, I attempted an even more photo-real drawing of a playmate holding a metal gate in a garden (my shipmate Richard Martel now owns it). Then in 1983 while at UC Irvine as a dual major in art and biology (pre-med), I drew "A Portrait of Northern Ireland" -- my first truly photo-real drawing. My art professor, Jerry Anderson, took one look at it and said, "I don't think you're going to Medical School." At first I dismissed his remark, but later, it proved to be prophetic. My year studying biology at the Univ. of Sussex in England as part of UC's Education Abroad Program turned out to be a life-changer. In addition to it being the greatest and happiest year of my life, I found myself being drawn (pun intended) towards art more and more as I visited the great museums and cathedrals and churches in Europe. When I got back to Irvine, I immediately changed majors from biology to art; but later, I felt a bit guilty in leaving all those bio units behind, so I took out a student loan, worked almost full time in a deli, and finished another degree in psychology with a biological emphasis (all that bio easily transferred). Earlier, while at Irvine, I took a beginning ceramics class with Gifford Myers. It was strange, but I just knew I could sculpt without even thinking of it. It was magic and love at first sight. I just walked up to the clay and immediately sculpted a person's head and it looked remarkably real. I then set out in that same class to create a life-size sculpture that I called the "Table." The day I finished it, I wheeled it outside the ceramics studio and stood and looked at it and took some pictures (you can see these pictures in the "Sculpture" section of this website). But while I did this, I didn't notice a woman next to me also looking at it until she suddenly walked over to me, handed me a rose from out of nowhere, smiled, and then simply walked away. I was stunned. It was then that I realized the true power of art and I was hooked. That "table" then led to "Form No. 2" many years later (a permanent life-size bronze figurative sculpture in the Chancellor's Rose Garden at UC Irvine). Though I stopped doing serious art/sculpture many years ago (around 2003-2004) to pursue my writing research, I have continually drawn -- particularly the illustrations for my papers and my book on Melville. Now that I'm retired from CMS, my plan is to go back into art and do a series of paintings that are based on my research. I also plan to get back into sculpture as well -- maybe even try my hand at marble carving, something that Chris Mikulasek had taught me many years ago on San Juan Island.
I have been asked by many people what the title of "Form No. 2" means, and I tell them that it is the second form in a series of four that I'm planning on sculpting. "Form No. 1" will be a figure lying down in a fetal position with one arm reaching upwards for that first hint of awareness. He will be completely covered by a cloth, his face hidden. "Form No. 2," a finished life-size bronze at UC Irvine, is the same figure crouching down, his muscular body ironically weighed down by the soft cloth that partially covers him. The end of the cloth, curled around the head, slightly falls away, being a hint of his determination to rise. In "Form No. 3," he is now sitting up, a mask in his hand, and is engaged in intense personal introspection. "Form No. 4," the last in the series, is where he will be standing in an affirmation. Not knowing all the answers, the mask dangling in his hand, he is confident in partaking the journey we all face. Each piece is separate and stands on its own, and yet they are intricately linked in an emerging progression.
Other than that, I won't elaborate any further as to the specific meaning of the series, for it is a mirror that seems to reflect the internal state of the viewer. I've heard many views expressed as to what "Form No. 2" means, and I've always hesitated to speak up for fear of destroying something personal and vital. It seems the piece, as with all art, carries with it a momentum and energy that is unleashed when first encountered by the viewer. To concretize the meaning is to imprison it. As Walt Whitman said, "you must not be too precise or scientific about birds, and trees, and flowers." It seems that there is always a cost with precision, or definition. Are we merely the sum of our parts, i.e., elements ordered on a chart bound by physical laws? Or are we more than the sum? If I were to analyze this sculpture and tell you every thought that went into its making, will that add to the power of the piece, or merely detract from it, filter your perception and reduce it? What is the meaning, I ask, inherent in the title of Beethoven's fifth symphony? Or any of Mozart's for that matter? Sometimes I feel a title is appropriate for a piece, for a hook is given, a door opened to guide the viewer to a place from which he/she can begin to relate to it. Its title grounds the work and contextualizes it. But for this series, I'm letting the forms speak for themselves. The clarity of the figure and its position is contextualized enough. It's the mystery, what's unspoken in the work, that's important here. I would like the viewer to feel a part of the piece by having him/her discover in the work something that might reflect how they intuitively feel to be true about themselves, or about the world in general.
I truly believe that these non-verbalized elements are an intrinsic part of all art -- figurative or abstract. I love viewing abstract work, and am especially fond of, and intellectually/emotionally moved by, the brilliance of such artists as Picasso, Mondrian, Duchamp, Pollack, Brancusi, Kline, Irwin, Noguchi, and Jenkins. However, I'm personally drawn to the figure and the rigorous technical skill needed to express it, for I find a direct and deep connection through it that I can't find by any other means. And the figure also seems to me more accessible. Figurative work displays an emotional and conceptual spectrum for both the layman and the academic alike. I think of both the beauty and the brilliance of the "Loacoon," Michelangelo's "David" and "Pieta," the "Victory of Samothrace", Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne," or Rodin's the "Thinker." They are all conceptually complex and strikingly beautiful and arrest the attention of nearly everyone who views them. Through great skill and effort, they have been recognized as humanity's segue way to the soul, a direct and non-exclusive doorway that leads both the initiated and uninitiated into those deepest of layers of being that we all ultimately yearn and hunger for. Though commercial or surface work has their place, they are not a healthy substitute and will never be able to truly satisfy us.
The Greek painter Eupompos, when asked which of his predecessors he had taken as a model for his artistic creation, said, "one should imitate nature itself, not another artist." Nature was the seminal starting point of the abstract movement, and most of the masters understood anatomy and perspective and light and how to translate these principles into an artistic representation. Thus, they first had to learn to "see" nature before they could remodel it, and more importantly, to transform it -- a lesson that seems at times to have been forgotten today.
I feel the closer art reflects this "seeing" or awareness of ourselves -- our own nature as a function of nature -- in this point in space and time, the more powerful it touches us at all points in space and time. The figure is the next best thing to the real body. There are no other layers to filter it from our perceptions. Thus the thought and emotion it elicits as we view it can have a profound effect on us as it's closer to the source of our inner being. As modern science has shown, the images the mind's eye sees are mere models our brain, the master artist, has painted under a brilliant spell of illusion. The physical reality is there, but how it looks, feels, smells, tastes, sounds, from an absolute sense, we will never know with our species specific cortexes. Thus we deal in models of models. And the more abstract they are, the more layered filters, the more distance, the less energy is felt in the experience of them.
Figurative sculpture has been around as long as art has, and as long as we inhabit bodies made of flesh, we will feel the urge to mirror them and to transform them in our own image as a function of the time we live in. There is a tradition of figurative sculpture that goes back at least 27,000 years to the Venus of Willedorf, and just as those early artists never strayed too far from the flesh that they deemed to be just as vital as the spirit it housed, I truly believe that the figure will always have something to say about what it is to be human. For it's not only the most immediate and direct sensual link to our spirit or soul, but its biological and physical properties allows for the very act of consciousness itself. And its evolution. When I sculpt, I find it is important to be aware of and find that inner spirit reflected within the core of the piece itself. This in turn leads to a harmony of parts -- plane flowing gracefully into plane, line into line, which is akin to dance -- form flowing into form flowing into form.
And why should I attempt to find such rhythm in my own figurative work or in others? Because ultimately it is a reflection of the rhythm which we have experienced in our own lives, the rhythm of life itself, of our place in an evolving continuum. We are not abstracted upon the earth -- whimsically placed over it. We are physical, connected, and have evolved from within it. We are a function of a deeper evolutionary process -- a conscious reflection of a natural organic rhythm that has emerged and is reaching ever higher towards conscious complexity. I feel the job of the artist is to capture that rhythm, that flux, so that a viewer may someday resonate with and unleash that same energy within his/her own body, within his/her own unique persona. To that aim, I hope I'm at least partially successful.
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