Gallery

Angelus

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Angelus


57″ x 18″ x 6″


Today clocks and watches, Fitbits and iPhones, let us mark time. In bygone days bells did the job. Whether atop churches or town halls they were also used to celebrate as well as to mourn. Though only a child, I’ll not forget the excitement roused by the near constant ringing of bells throughout Baltimore neighborhoods when World War II ended. Neither will I forget their toll during the burial of JFK.
Even in our high tech world, bells have their place. While walking the bustling streets of the financial district of New York bells sounded at noon. Many churches still ring bells three times daily, at 6AM, Noon, and 6PM. That devotion that harkens back to the time when an angel announced to Mary that she would soon conceive. The ringing is an invitation for hearers to pause in the midst of the day’s activities and to recall the sacred mystery in which we are all involved.
This is a door bell, albeit one that makes a statement at anyone’s front door. It is made from discarded industrial waste. You will recognize the bell as a gas cylinder, the type that provides oxygen for patients or acetylene for welders. It has been sawed in half to make a golden bell. A web of steel tubing holds it as well as the green leaves made from pressed steel. The bell rests atop a piece of steel salvaged from a discarded plow blade. Did you notice the bird atop the bell? I sculpted it in solid bronze. The clapper that hangs to the left of the frame is made from a piece of hard wood, following the Buddhist traditions.
This sculpture reminds the hearer that there is something sacred about the person who knocks at their door.

I want to express my gratitude to Doug Adams (the master of bell making with discarded industrial waste) for his inspiration and help.

The Three Graces

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Three Graces

Glass, 10″ x 10″
Steel stand, 12″ x 5″


The work of Ruth Faktor, the highly accomplished Israeli ceramic artist, is the inspiration for this cast glass piece. When visiting a friend in New York I noticed she had one Ruth Factor’s ceramic panels among her cherished pieces. I loved it.

Back home I roughly sculpted Ruth Faktor’s piece in clay and then cast it in glass. Though her piece was not titled, it reminded me of the three graces found within Greek and Roman mythologies. I do not know if the artist had the three graces in mind yet every time I glance at this piece, I think of charm, beauty and creativity, the gifts of the three graces.

Check out some of Ruth Faktor’s work at http://www.sapergalleries.com/RuthFaktor.html.

A Sanctuary

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A Sanctuary

11″ x 10″ x 11″


Many have entered the silence of a church, synagogue or mosque to lift their burdens when there was nowhere else in the world to go. They are places of shelter when storms have unraveled every stitch of meaning from their lives.

They are also the place where many of us were blessed as infants, joined in marriage, and from which we will be buried. Sacred places are frontier places where the mystery of life is touched.

For the past month or two I’ve been reading John O’Donahue’s book entitled “Beauty.”

“In all our talk about the institutional church in the West, in our anger and disappointment at its theological blindness and abuse of power and person, we have fatally forgotten the harvest of healing presence that dwells in the house of God. In our desperate search for meaning and healing, we rush through our towns and cities on our way to work, therapy or doctors. We pass by these huge sanctuaries of absolute presence, totally oblivious of the divine welcome that awaits us …” Page 161

This piece of a church on its head is my effort to express O’Donohue’s sentiments in clay. I was influence by a photo of a building impaled on its steeple that appeared years ago in the New York Times’ coverage of an exhibition at the Denver Museum of Art.

Grandmother

Grandmother

15″ x 7″ x 7″


This peaceful woman in a pale blue-green housecoat, sits musing. Her hand is to her chin and, as with so many of the elderly. Her thinning legs and feet barely touch the floor. She could be anyone’s grandmother.

The inspiration for the sculpture is a painting by Helen Brancato, a Philadelphia artist. The model is an elderly Sister.

While I know little about the Sister, given her age we know she lived through the Depression, two world wars, and the remarkable changes brought about by technology. I think of her as having a secret on how to age well.