Steel, copper, paint, gold leaf
20” x 25” x 17”
This sculpture began as a musical symbol, a clef, cut from a sheet of 14 gauge steel. My plan was to use it as part of a larger outdoor garden sculpture. I jettisoned that plan. Consequently the clef sat for months unused in the corner of my workshop. After months it found its way to the scrap pile to be sold for pennies on the dollar.
One morning when I felt blah I took the clef from the pile and wondered what it would look like if I crushed it. Without a thought or plan I forced it into the jaws of a large industrial vise. The results were disappointing. It was returned to the scrap pile.
John Boyce (sculptor, department chair) walked by, noticed it, and casually remarked, “I like that. You oughta think of doing something with it.”
I did. This is the result. It is a metaphor. The clef has been crushed yet if you look closely it remains. The piece has a beauty all its own. To return to Jung’s thought, The need to change is never ending. “We cannot live the afternoon of life guided by the program of life’s morning.”
Martin Helldorfer
1936 –