Gallery

Te Deum – II

Why is this sculpture named “Te Deum?” Isn’t that the title of an ancient song praising the holiness of ordinary life? Yes. Charles Reznikoff’s poem titled “Te Deum” suggests the same. Those thoughts were on my mind as a sculpted this piece.

Te Deum

Not because of victories

I sing,

having none,

but for the common sunshjne,

the breeze,

the largess of the spring.

Not for victory

but for the day’s work done

as we’ll as I am able;

not for a seat upon the dais

but at the common table.

Resilience

“Resilience”

24″ x 24″ x 72″

Steel, wood

With this sculpture I try to capture the experience of failure or disappointment from which new life rises. The sculpture includes burned wood and ash. From the ash a contemporary white steel form emerges. My hope is that viewers will tarry long enough to recognize a similar experience in their lives.

Homage to Trees

60" x 60" x 10 gauge 

This sculpture began  when I tried to fashion a tree made of wood. The piece became incredibly heavy. Though tenuously clamped to a secure post in my workshop, it was difficult to secure. Twice it fell on me. Once it hurt. For weeks my hands turned to other projects.

Slowly it dawned on me that it would be quicker and safer to cut the tree from a sheet of steel using a plasma cutter. It was.  Hence the sculpture.

Trees have memories. Their rings catalogue in surprising detail a history of drought, disease, humidity, floods, DNA, fires, heat, cold, trauma and homes for all manner of creatures.  Call this sculpture a homage to trees.

Winter’s Gift

Winter’s Gift

80” x 20” x 20”

Steel, plant, soil, paint

Most sculptures are inanimate. They are placed on pedestals, often in museums and in fine homes. This one is not inanimate. It is living.  Something about it causes us to pause.

Why do we slow?  Art awakens reflection, gets us thinking, stirs feeling. “Winter’s Gift” does that.

Martin Helldorfer 

1936

Children of war

The Child Among Debris

17″ x 14″ x 7″

Steel, art board, paint

Today’s news documents in word and image the bombings in war torn countries. Neighborhoods are leveled and thousands of families displaced.  Tonight’s news was about Gaza. It is said that the number of children murdered exceeds the number of combatants. 

All week I found myself cutting and welding together dozens of small squares to form a web of sorts in the shape of a ball. Using a laser I cut out the image of a child with outstretched arms, one hand holding flowers, the other a bird. I placed that image within the rounded ball that I had made. Then crushed it.  This sculpture, a child among debris, is result.  I find it striking.