Expression in sculpture: dig deep to the darkness

Oct 26

In talking with people about my sculptures during the Nevada County Open Studios Tour, I received many comments about my “Stop wishing, Start doing” sculpture.The comment I struggle with most is, “I want to see more sculptures like that.”Sculptures by Kathy Frey ©2014. From left to right: Don't Drown; Emerging (lose the shell); Stop wishing, Start doing.Don’t get me wrong — I’m not bothered by this comment because I can see it too — there is something different about this sculpture compared to the other two with which it’s shown.When I asked one of my artist groups about this — what is different? — they said, “we can’t answer that for you.”We talked about the superficial stuff: it uses a little bit of wire but is mostly comprised of other materials. It’s inherently mixed media.As I thought on it more, though, I realized I allowed some fear and darkness to come in. This sculpture felt like my first, even though I had scaled up some of my Riverstone Bangle forms for a client earlier this year.Riverstone Bangles by Kathy Frey (photo by Larry Sanders)Where that felt like a technical challenge with those types of issues to figure out — wire gauges, welding, time estimates, etc. — it wasn’t scary on any deeper level.Stop wishing, Start doing ©2014 Kathy Frey“Stop wishing, Start doing” challenged me to dig deep to express something. There were still technical hurdles to figure out — especially making a hanging bracket (thanks to my sweetie, sculptor Sky Mowen and his shop) — but there was more of an undercurrent of fear and darkness.For one, I started with a concept but really didn’t know any of the details… I literally just started and figured I’d cross each hurdle as I came to it. The heart was a last-minute edition that took the piece from feeling bland and empty to feeling complete. I actually used a rubber dip product that I’d had in my studio for 3 years and had never opened even to try it.Then there were the ongoing lists of unanswerable questions to acknowledge or ignore:

Will it freak people out that I’m using bones? Will anyone else understand what this is about? Does that matter? Have I figured out how to stop wishing for things in my life and actually take steps and own up to the fact that I can make them happen?

I have other ideas for sculpture rattling around in my psyche. I’m hoping I won’t keep falling back on the comforts of exploring form and scale but rather dig deeper to that space that’s hard to acknowledge — and even harder to face, explore, express and display publicly, open for discussion.Honestly, that sounds more exciting, though. One of the main reasons I branched out into sculpture from jewelry was to deepen my level of expression and engagement in a form that invites deeper conversation of interesting issues.Now some of the questions I’m going to ask myself as ideas form are:

How can I take this deeper?
What fear boundary is it pushing?
How engaged am I in this piece?
What types of discussions might it invoke (internal dialog counts)?

Just so I can check in. And push myself. My internal compass will always pull me back to wanting to put aesthetically pleasing and interesting work out into the world, so never fear, my work won’t get too dark (yet… I’m working on a new project with Madame Doktor Belladonna where we encourage each other to embrace the darkness — or any aspects of ourselves — however it shows up… Cult of Gemini. Keep that phrase in mind. I’ll keep you in the loop as it unfolds.)