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!
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  |
