Warm greetings to you in the New Year!
I have chosen to initiate this year with a Sculpture of the Month that evokes our present yearning to metamorphose into a new way of living.
The journey of this sculpture unfolded at various points of setback. I first sketched the imagery in June 2002, shortly after my mother died. Then, I sculpted and fired the piece in 2008, just as the housing market collapsed and many people lost their homes.
In 2019, this sculpture was featured in the opening exhibit and subsequent naming session held at Gallery Mar in Carmel. After much discussion, which seemed to evade consensus, the owner of the gallery finally suggested the name Setbacks to Metamorphosis, and we all immediately agreed. Next, the world began sheltering in place, and like the previous times of setback, the gallery faced its own survival crisis.
In all these cases, however, a new life successfully emerged from the old, with new adaptations for the future.
Setbacks to Metamorphosis
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This New Year seems filled with a deep yearning for change; yet, constant setbacks confront us on this path. We struggle with the frustrations of social isolation, strange political disagreements that foment unchecked across social media, supply chain breakdowns, and so much loss. We seem to live in a sort of cocoon right now. Like caterpillars at the end of their life cycle, we’ve separated off from the world in order to transform. We must be willing to dissolve ourselves to fathom a viable new way to live in the world and metamorphose into beautiful butterflies. Then, we can join all the other emerging butterflies and take flight together into a new vision of shared community. Sometimes it seems like we will not overcome all the setbacks. This piece inspires me to believe we will. Wishing you clear pathways of metamorphosis in the New Year! Click Here* to add your comments & name suggestions or see what others have posted for this piece
Sculpture of the Month #19 December 2021The message in the December Sculpture of the Month is my year-end, holiday gift to you. May it give you light! This month’s sculpture belongs to my friend Jody who purchased it at the “Three Fridas” show I held in […] Sculpture of the Month #18 November 2021The November Sculpture of the Month received its name from an auditorium full of people at the Louden Center in Santa Cruz, CA in 2007, during the first exhibit of my Rosecrans Project sculptures. The naming discussion focused in on […] Sculpture of the Month #17 October 2021The October Sculpture of the Month has always been one of my favorites. Completed in 2007, The Mermaid and the Minotaur appears as the feature image on my postcard for Santa Cruz Open Studios happening October 9th & 10th. A […] Sculpture of the Month #16 September 2021The sketch for this month’s Sculpture of the Month, Cartesian Gambit, was created on the last day of my 1997 trip to Paris, I sat near the Luxembourg Gardens intuitively drawing a scene. What emerged on the paper reminded me, […] Sculpture of the Month #15 August 2021The August Sculpture of the Month played an important role in my development of the naming process I now use to auger out the stories told in my sculptures. Many of you have asked what I have in mind when […] Sculpture of the Month #14 July 2021The July Sulpture of the Month, along with several other of my sculptures, hangs on the stucco wall surrounding Paul Demartini’s beautifully designed and landscaped backyard garden. Paul and I met when he attended classes I hosted in San Diego […] Sculpture of the Month #13 June 2021My wife and I got our marriage license on Friday the 13th. Since then, the number 13 has shown up for us in advance of significant transformations so frequently, we’ve come to pay particular attention whenever it appears! This June, […] Sculpture of the Month #12 May 2021It’s hard to believe I began the Sculpture of the Month series almost a year ago. This month marks the 12th piece I’ve featured. Hooray! So far, I’ve always chosen yet-to-be-sold works for this series; however, for the next several […] Sculpture of the Month #11 April 2021This month’s sculpture comes a little later than usual due to a sudden laptop crash while traveling and my prior preparations for a presentation for West Coast Drawing. I recorded said presentation, by the way, and should be able to […]
I have chosen to develop a style of artistic expression which has little precedent in the modern aesthetic vernacular. I have ignored the modern concept of the human being as divided into mind and body, and of the human as separate from nature. More about Brad  |
