Author: martin

Urn

For many, to speak of passing and of how and where we want our cremains is a topic avoided. It is also an expression of love, of others and ourselves. This is an urn to hold the ashes of a woman who has lived by the words “act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God.” It was created in the tradition of folk art. The bird is solid bronze, the box ceramic, and its colors hopeful.

Urn

10″ x 10″ x 12″

Ceramic, bronze

Gratitude

Janitor’s Room 729B

24″ x 24″ x 36″

Steel

I wanted to communicate a sense of gratitude for those who have the thankless task of keeping the building clean. I link the feeling of gratitude with flowers, specifically  bouquets.   Hence this sculpture, an abstract bouquet. I placed it in the space  in which my feelings are embedded …. the  housekeepers’ closet used by the women and men— largely hard working  unheralded people — charged with cleaning  the sinks, toilets, urinals, and floors dirtied by unthinking students both young and old.  Hence a gleaming bouquet set in the windowless, clean, nondescript, generic closet identified as “729B Janitor Room.” 

2023 work

During 2023 I made multiple sculptures, some large some small, by cutting and then bending an abstract steel form.  See image. 

As the two dimensional steel form was bent, a three dimensional sculpture was created.  In some instances, the sculpture’s initial form became unrecognizable.  For example:

  Once comfortable with the challenges of bending the flat steel, I welded two or three of the initial forms together and then bent them. Again, a three dimensional sculpture resulted.  The six photos that follow reflect some of my work during the past year.   Critique/comments/questions welcome.                       

PAUSE

For years, colleagues, friends and family have advised me to slow down. In the workaday world I’ve been encouraged to hurry.  I want neither. Rather I want to live reflectively.  This sculpture is about pausing … depending on how slowly or frenetically we may live. Said another way it is about having a thoughtfulness about ourselves.  I have tried to create a sculpture that invites the passerby to reflect….whatever their 0chosen speed.  I do not want to be didactic beyond that paused moment.

PAUSE

Steel, glass, acrylic paint

60” x 24” x 24″

IN MEMORIAM

When a loved one dies, words falter. So does life, at least for a moment, sometimes an extended one. This sculpture expresses that wordless many dimensioned experience of faltering. I use design and the medium of steel…usually associated with being cold, heavy and rigid…to express warmth, motion, and hope.

IN MEMORIAM

Steel

18″ x 8″ x 7″