Ed: Adapted from Federal Way News, May 19, 2001 by Tammy Baley.
TB: How did it all start?
TS: As a boy I won my mother’s attention with paints and canvas. My parents didn’t shower me with hugs and kisses or praise. But I could earn compliments if I excelled with abilities they admired: artistic for my mom, and athletic for my dad. I remember cherishing the times dad played catch with me and coached our little league teams, and cheered me on as I tackled the bigger kids on the football team. And I recall my mom, whose knitting needles seemed extensions of her fingers, saying “good job” when I showed her my latest drawing or craft project. I was into trouble unless I was kept busy: Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, paper routes, tap dance, guitar, model planes, summer tennis league (runner up).
TB: How did you decide on sculpting as an escape?
TS: After being laid off late in my career, (society doesn’t want quality control, just low prices), I needed something to keep me out of my wife’s hair, and the leap from engineering to art wasn’t that difficult. Putting away the protractors, calculators and code books was a relief, and I didn’t miss the arguments with building officials and contractors. Measurable results are a requisite for me. Sculpture provides a three-dimensional product I can touch.
The lure of dust, noise, a reason to buy tools, and a past exposure to soapstone, by a fluke, connected me to NWSSA. Years ago I had seen a carved Egyptian cat in the Boston Museum of Art catalog, but it was too expensive for our budget. So I bought a piece of soapstone and carved it myself, with a fair degree of success. Shopping for flowers at Swanson’s nursery I picked up a NWSSA flyer showing sculptors displaying their work and craft. Needing a bit of adventure and purpose in life, I signed up for the Thetis Island symposium in 1998. The hook was set. A happenstance connection with Nicky Oberholtzer resulted in a semi-apprenticeship situation and being a member of her and Patty McPhee’s studio in Burien, just north west of the SeaTac airport.
TB: What took you so long to settle on sculpting?
TS: I guess it was just surviving the 8 to 5 hassles of raising a family and earning a living. That seems to take precedence over satisfying inner needs for most people. Junior high art lessons were forgotten when we moved to Anchorage, Alaska, for high school. Skiing, hunting, and after-school jobs siphoned off my artistic talent, which had only a few resurgences for over 40 years. An electrical engineering career satisfied most of my creativity compulsion. A few painting lessons with Bob Ross, and other traveling artists passing through Anchorage, helped keep the basic desires going.
TB: Do you have any particular philosophy about your hobby?
TS: The hardest part of my life has been surviving the disappointments from not meeting the high expectations I’ve set for myself. I once read that “Happiness is the excess of achievement over expectations.” If you expect perfection there is no joy even if it’s achieved. After years of the precision of engineering projects sculpting has relaxed me. The stone has its own way, and won’t be pushed. It’s in no hurry, either. Tools and stones have limitations. Sometimes the preliminary sketch won’t fit: go with the flow. Sometimes a 24” sculpture doesn’t fit through a 30” door: patch it. The past “high expectations” are dimmed; replaced with an attitude that “I’m doing this for my own enjoyment. I hope someone likes it, and helps me fund my hobby.” Certain results aren’t going to happen because of skills or stone, so why try? With no goal there’s no pressure, so set obtainable goals.
Stone work is exciting and satisfying, offering challenges both in the actual carving process, and in the presentation. Sometimes an idea is imposed on the stone; other times the form just needs releasing from it. Sometimes the surprises are good; sometimes the flaw is in the wrong place. We don’t have total control. Adjust.
Chill out. It’s good for the soul.
TB: What are your personal challenges?
TS: Marketing is my nemesis, partly because I’m just a hobbyist, and partly because I’m not a people person. Being retired, and not having to sculpt, affects my attitude, sometimes positively, sometimes not. I don’t enjoy web sites, advertising, and road shows. I do enjoy the “artist-in-action” opportunities I’ve participated in, chatting with the public. The Flower and Garden Show is a lot of fun, if one forgets the delivery and pick-up frustration. A better appreciation of art history might serve me well, if only to avoid embarrassment. More patience with the various stages of sculpting would help: I push tools sometimes, and have to deal with the resulting problems. I’m sure some of us take too wide a cut when fretting, or don’t take the time to investigate changing slip planes.
TB: What’s your training and education referencing sculpting?
TS: There has been no formal education in the Arts, other than a Community College art scholarship in junior high school. I’m not learned in the ways of the classics or geology. Michelangelo did some neat stuff, along with Hepworth, Noguchi, and Brancusi. And I’m not really interested to know their histories. I’m generally on “overload” halfway through a museum. Rocks are “pretty” or “neat,” and may be definable as granite, limestone, or alabaster. But I just want to whack and grind on them.
Photography, boat building, home remodels, oil painting, jewelry making, and other distracting efforts through the years have established a general degree of skill with tools. Symposia offered by NWSSA over the last seven years have significantly contributed to my knowledge and efficiency. Ribbons at the Puyallup Fair and NWSSA shows attest to a degree of success.
Creativity is in me. It’s taken many forms over the years: a model builder in grade school, boat and cabin building as a young man, and a career in electrical engineering designing electrical systems for buildings. All have added skills that relate to stone sculpting. A sporadic stone carver for 20 years, I’ve taken it on as a full-time hobbyist. Beginning with an “I can do that” attitude, the process has matured with reading, instruction, NWSSA symposia, and lots of tool time. I really appreciate the patience some of the instructors have exhibited at my stupid questions. I sometimes consider myself as just an observer with tools when I see the works of some of our professional sculptors, but tough: I’m probably here to stay.
TB: What is your work space like?
TS: I have access to an air compressor and a covered area in Burien where most of the hammering and chiseling occur. Wet polishing, noise, and dust are OK in this zoning. The neighbors, an auto repair shop and warehouse, couldn’t care less. Unfortunately, the commute, set up, and cleanup time take an hour and a half out of the day, and an early start or working into the afternoon involve I-5 traffic congestion. Finishing and hand work occur in my garage niche (SN Sept/Oct ’04) along with layout and contemplation. With some careful placement of buckets and Visqueen I can even do wet polishing in the garage. I’ve just added a space in my garage attic to get back into painting. I miss the excitement of dealing with bright colors.
TB: Describe your work.
TS: I generally don’t sculpt really definable subjects. Maybe a suggestion of an animal or figure, but “non-representational” forms; not even abstracts. Pleasant-looking shapes that don’t have a hidden agenda are OK with me. The twisty forms of a popular ‘Screensaver’ are the basis for several of my pieces. They’re fun to do; sometimes it’s a real challenge to make the coils flow together. Creating defined figures would open me up to criticism I don’t need. My technique may be criticized (I’m sort of a “make do/get by” sorta guy) and you may not like the form, but never will I hear a comment that “the nose is too big.” Shortcuts are OK; sanding isn’t a lot of fun. I have over a dozen pieces underway at any one time. In various stages of completion, they allow me to work big or little tools, inside or outside, neatly or messily, at home or the studio, depending on mood or schedule.
Most of my work will fit on a table top, and sell for $200-$1200 dollars. Some are just experiments: as candle holders, vases, pen holders, or just displayed interesting fragments. I hate to waste stone, even though the time spent in extra cutting to save it isn’t worth the additional cost. I admit to salvaging several broken pieces with creative patches (‘Arctic Cactus’, ‘Faultline’). Gallery owner Michelle Latimer says: “You will want to touch and feel his sculptures. They could go into a log cabin or a contemporary home just as easily.”
TB: Describe some of your favorite pieces.
TS: I have a lot, and just as many PITA’s (pain in the asses). Those I finish in the hopes somebody will pay enough for tool/stone cost recovery. But others my wife or I will set aside, or put a ridiculous price on. ‘Talisman’ is a rendition of a Maori charm about 2” high my neighbor brought back from New Zeeland. The gold marble is set off well by the dark gray andesite base. ‘Arctic Cactus’ was assembled from pieces that kept breaking off the wings of a seagull I was trying to make from an opinionated chunk of Colorado Yule marble. It’s held together by gravity and brass pins. “Continuum” is a screensaver-inspired creation from a gray/pink soapstone from Randy Zieber. The base is a concrete porch pad with the sides cut to fit the sculpture bottom, and cut granite tiles cemented to it. “Dominance” was a result of my “material-saving” gene: it’s a scrap from “Shazam,” who’s basic chunk was too thick. A skill saw and carbide blade, supplemented with some elbow grease on a bow saw, freed up an interesting scrap. The ‘Faultline’ rough-out fell off the sandbags while I wasn’t looking. A broken piece from a coffee table top was used to emphasize the split.
TB: What are your sources of inspiration?
TS: I’ve always been a collector: childhood memories are of beach rocks and shells, stamps, comics and cartoons from “Boys’ Life,” photographs, artworks, and ideas for the thousands of things I’m going to make over the next three lifetimes. I have four 3-ring binders full of articles, pictures, photos, and sketches, and each week adds a few more scraps. Jewelry ads are a good source for my free-form shapes. Frequently the stone suggests what it wants to be, and I help. Other times a remembered shape fits almost perfectly to a stone.
TB: What do you foresee the future bringing?
TS: More war and pestilence. But to the point: my show this spring didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. The advertising needed a lot of improvement; the bad weather on opening night I couldn’t control. I was a bit burned out with the last minute rush to finish and deliver; I haven’t really gotten enthused since. But it’s coming. I have an idea for a show next spring, and will do better with its staging. There’s nothing like success to boost one’s spirits.
As I age I find my mind asks performance from my body that it can’t provide. The medium-sized rocks are becoming a source of pain, and moving into big stuff is out of the question. I hope for enough coffee-table-sized ideas to keep me enthused. I recently rented a cut-off saw and reduced the big pieces in my stockpile into manageable pieces so I’m not tempted to wrench my back. Maybe I’ll last as long as Jan Brown, Nancy Green and other old-timers.
Continuing exposure to the NWSSA artists will be good for my soul and enthusiasm. I have more ideas than time. Stone is plentiful. The challenges presented by the various stones and concepts offer enough potential sculptures to last my lifetime. More sculptures displaying nature’s beauty are underway. Presenting intriguing and interesting forms is my way of sharing my self with others.