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A JOURNEY
COTTONWOOD CHAPTER
Remembering only back as far as a joint venture with my friend and fellow
carver Brian, when we wanted to score some good carving stone in large
sizes, our friend Amy put us in touch with a quarry/mill in Indiana. We
pooled our meager dollars and ordered a trailer full of limestone, I think
about 30,000 pounds. One block, by chance, was bigger than Brian’s truck
could handle, so I got to keep it, all 3 tons of it. I had rented a
forklift the day it was delivered by a hyperactive Russian trucker named
Alexei, and after he departed, Brian and I picked out our favorites, then
he loaded up his rig and went on home. I was left with a dozen nice blocks
of Indiana oolitic to ring and drool over. The only one that was
indisputably mine weighed much more than my little Ford tractor would be
able to lift, so I decided to prepare it for carving before returning the
forklift to the rental shop. I wacked off a two foot chunk, and stood the
remainder upright next to my carving shed. It was 7ft high, 3 ft wide and
2 ft deep.
There it sat for several months, while the smaller piece became a SEEKER,
and other things happened, until one day I just knew what was hiding in
there, and started carving. The design was based on a group of pieces
called SLOW DANCE, all dancing couples partly embraced, and rooted into
the earth as trees. Ents and Entwives? It’s a long story, involving
Maralyne and me and our romance, but by this time the image had refined
itself and become so clear that I whipped out a 1/5 scale macquett in a
couple days. Then I waited a few more days while asking the block for help
and pleading with the image to stay still long enough, and finally
accepted the inevitable and dived into the stone.
I carved like a madman, with hand tools only and with the purest of
thoughts, for 19 days, dawn to dusk, in ecstatic frenzy, until I
collapsed. It was done. Not one hesitation, not one doubt, not one recarve,
not one lick more than necessary, it was done.
SLOW DANCE. A man and woman, tenderly but solidly holding each other in a
gently swaying rhythm. Their hands are becoming branches and twigs, her
hair willow and his cottonwood leaves, and their feet are rooting deep
into the earth. Muscles are smoothly hinted at, faces are serene, the
motion is paused in a timeless embrace.
A very nice piece, and I love looking at it and touching it every day, but
I have nowhere to show it and share it, when I happened to call my friend
and mentor Myrna, who is just opening Monarch Art Center, a new sculpture
park near Olympia. She says bring it on down, it will have a place of
honor at the entrance to the park. Rent a truck, rent a forklift, off we
go to Monarch. Myrna loves it and calls it a major work, and we place it
in a very nice spot just inside the park. They are preparing for a big
open house in a couple of weeks, and I drive home alone, $500 poorer, but
elated. Nothing happened.
A year later I pick it up and haul it back to Anacortes, where it stands
proudly in front of the Depot Gallery and my first one man show as a stone
carver. Nothing happens.
Next year I enter it at Big Rock Garden, haul it to Bellingham, and George
loves it, but nothing happens.
End of that year I haul it home, now nearly $2000 in hauling costs and
what to do with it now. It stands where it was born and I hug it every day
and vow never to let it go again, until one day new friend Kay stops by
and invites me to bring it out to Westcott Bay where the sculpture park is
getting ready for its 2nd exhibition and she needs big works. OK.
Two years it stands in a lovely location up the hill, in front of a big
fir tree, looking out over the little valley, getting good exposure and
some loving comments from visitors. Nothing.
I had resigned myself to letting it just stay there forever, I didn’t have
the energy nor the money to bring it home, and was seriously considering
giving up my sculpture career altogether. One beautiful September day Kay
calls, gives me a name and a phone number, says call him right now. Jerry,
a music producer from Hollywood, has a summer estate on San Juan Island,
he and his wife Ann had just come from a patrons party at the sculpture
park, where they fell in love with SLOW DANCE.
Hello Mr. Moss, I be the carver yes sir, its for sale, I bring it right
over to you. Next week, the day before they fly home to Beverly Hills, we
set it up in front of a beautiful pond, looking down at their house and
the water, and it was truly magical. This was the home it was meant for.
WOW!
I get a check, the biggest paycheck I’ve ever had, go my merry way home.
The following week I offer to give Kay a little sculpture for her faith
and kindness, anything she wants, and she picks out my latest SEEKER, a
small one. A female one, made of Carrara marble given me by M J, another
friend and mentor.
Take the check home, pay some bills, there’s money left. Maralyne says
lets go looking for new galleries, maybe you can buy some new stone and
make some new sculptures.
We walk into Blue Horse gallery and meet Wade, such a sweet man he says
we’re going to France in the spring, you want a go? Money in pocket says
yes!
Now the next spring we actually go to France with Wade and 19 new friends,
what happens next?
CHESTNUT CHAPTER
One small thing, we go visit St. Madeleine’s Church,
because, although we are not into churches and generally avoid anything
associated with them, this is Paris and there are magnificent churches
everywhere, and some really fantastic art and architecture made in them,
and most importantly our middle granddaughter is named Magdalena, and I
want to take a picture for her of the church front where the name is
carved Magdalena, being in Latin instead of French. And in relation to the
preceding chapter, the 3rd version of SLOW DANCE, in black walnut, was
made especially as a wedding gift from her dad, our son Tracy Dylan, to
her mother Shawna.
Go inside on 3rd visit, like good druish boy, see the fantastically
beautiful grand marble statue of MARY MAGDALENE being carried up to heaven
by winged angels, carved in 1841 by Carlo Marochetti, a terrific Italian
sculptor.
Remember Jack Kerouac, as he told in Satori in Paris, also went there and
was so awestruck by the same statue that he forgot to drop his coins in
the poor box, and his mother chided him for it when he got home, and he
really regretted it but never got a chance to go back and do it. So I
gratefully dropped my few coins in the poor box, for Jack. Also a SEEKER,
friend and mentor, and that’s certainly another chapter somewhere. The
wheel turns, the river flows, life is renewed in tiny bits.
On to the Louvre, and amongst the dizzying array of paintings and
sculptures, we encounter the WINGED VICTORY. What is it about this piece,
carved over 2000 years ago, busted and beat up, and seen in so many
pictures in so many books, that overwhelms me so?
As we look down that long hallway, past the crowds of people and all the
wondrous and huge French paintings, she stands like a bright beacon,
throwing out light and heat all around. Radiating light and heat and
shouts and yells and dust and smoke and wind. It’s a wind from long ago, a
gale blowing up from the Mediterranen carrying the screams and clamor of
war, but yet so still.
The surfaces left by the unknown carver had long since been smeared and
worn away, but the shapes and shadows remain. The flaring, sweeping,
gusting, swelling swirls and swoops of cloth and feather and strength of
stance and striding purpose, all the deep rippling power and splash of
potent motion are still there. Still pulsing with life and indomitable
spirit.
How can I not be moved? How can we all not weep? Standing beneath her,
touching her boat, reaching up to the sweep of her gown, gazing at the
swelling muscles of her stride, the glorious spread of her broken wings, I
can see the missing head and face appear, the gone arms outstretched, the
right hand raised in a fist of defiance or a wave or salute, her hair
flying all around her face like a storm cloud or a flock of birds. No, the
arms reach forward and hands together hold aloft a flame that lights up
her howling face. I see her and hear her and the great white light
emanating from that face. That glorious radiant face.
But what does it mean?
What must I do?
How do I become a part of that wind?
...To be continued...
Stonebard Summer Solstice
2005
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