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Created: Sunday, 02 May 1999 04:47
In March and April 1998, I visited two large outdoor exhibitions of stone sculptures from Zimbabwe-one in Singapore and the other in South Africa. Together, those shows demonstrated that Zimbabwean sculpture is amazing, artistically and in terms of organization and marketing. The exhibition in Singapore was at Fort Canning, a large park developed from a old British military base on a hill in the centre of the city. The 50 sculptures were arranged impressively over a football- field-sized area on the dome of the hill among open grassy areas, trees, pre- WWII cannon emplacements, heavy concrete abutments, and walkways. Pieces ranged in size from about 20 inches high to 8 feet or more, with most being larger than 3 feet high. Nearly all were human figures, although there were also a few animal (e.g. monkey) or animist figures, and there was only one geometric abstraction in both shows. I think the collection may be housed permanently in Singapore, although finding information about that was difficult so I'm not sure.
The South African exhibition in particular blew me away. That show was larger than the other by half, it included some even larger pieces, and was of higher and more consistent quality. It was there for only a few days on a trip to Germany. In terms of the depth and power of my experience of art and my appreciation of artists, that show was equal to any experience I have ever had, anywhere or any time. Part of the magic was in the site, no doubt, for to visit Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden even with no exhibition at all would have been a treat. It is a large mosaic of manicured lawns, incredible installations of shrubs and flowers, and several lushly vegetated watercourses, all sloping away from the nearby cliffs of Table Mountain, in the suburbs of Capetown. The park is stunning in its beauty, and the sculptures made it even more so. Good sculpture becomes more beautiful in beautiful surroundings, and the surroundings become more beautiful as well. This sculpture is good!
Even in a purely technical sense, most of the work in both shows exemplifies Bill Reid's idea of the wellmade object. Given the tools and techniques, the range of materials, and the time these artists have to work with, most of them made the most of what they had. Their use of texture is one of many good examples' and balance is another. Several works use the full range of textures that can be achieved in the material, and they use it effectively. Although most show neither polished, highly reflective surfaces nor weathered stone, rough and untouched from when the boulders were discovered in the field, some display both extremes of texture and several more textures in between. A good example is a woman walking with a large load on her head. She is carved with five distinct textures and five resulting colors, each of them distinct and each powerful in its evocation of perceptions and emotions in this human observer.
And balance! Let me tell you about balance. Everywhere that I went in the countryside, real women carried large loads on their heads, always with amazing grace. Whether standing talking with each other or moving over the landscape, they were always in balance; if not they would tire easily or fall. Loads more than a little out of balance would crash to the ground, and it would take increasingly more effort to keep them up as they fell. And so do the Zimbabwean women of stone carry their Burdens with grace. One balances an immense block of stone on her head while attending to a baby on her lap, serenely, as if in meditation. Somehow, she invites me to join her by entering a peaceful, meditative state of my own, and I do. Some time later I snap out of it, realize that I'm looking at a rock and not every real woman in the Third World, and drift on to the next encounter. That woman moves gracefully across the gentle landscape of Kirstenbosch, carrying a heavy bag of something very much worth carrying. She may not be resting, but she is at peace and she invites me to experience my own quietness and strength. Again my experience is real; it is not only that T am watching a real woman do her work but in some sense I am her and I am the work. What is it about the very finest art that invltes us to forget that it is art, forget that we are observing it, and lose all track of time? This is what we seek, in our experience of art as ln our experience of Ii ving, and I want you to know that I found it at Kirstenbosch!
In both shows the focus was clearly on the art and not on the artists; with a few exceptions, the works were unattributed. Artists' names were nowhere to be seen, although in both places they were available for the asking. In asking at Kirstenbosch, I entered a fascinating conversation with the main organizer (he also set up the Singapore show). He told me that the artists work as a co-op, and that it is very much a matter of making a living for them. They make and sell stuff, and they must do that or starve. It is work, not recreation. The consistently and increasingly high artistic quality of the work directly reflects better financial returns for better art in Europe. The artists are aware of the (mainly Western) issue of attribution, and know that sometime soon they will be selling their names as well as their work. But I got the impression that that is all part of a large-scale marketing plan and it will come when they consider it time. Because this man was an organizer and not an artist, though, I could not be sure what an artist would have said.
With that perspective I stepped into the garden, where two women squatted, demonstrating on life-sized heads with primitive hand tools. Neither spoke English, and both were fully absorbed in their work. They carved completely freely and spontaneously, developing the forms as they went and taking full advantage of the shapes of the stones they worked with. Neither was in any hurry to break the skin of the highly weathered rock; they worked on the parts they were working on and completely ignored the rest except as it became necessary. And as with so many tinished sculptures in both shows, both left large areas untouched. I mentioned this above in terms of design and expressive power. Here I will comment about it briefly here in terms of efficiency, in terms of making a living. Oi ven the tough economic constraints under which art as a profession must emerge in the Third World, it should be no surprise that textures tend toward the rough end of the spectrum. If you are poor and pressed for time to make a living, it makes sense to get the most bucks for the bang, so to speak, and minimize the amount of work. Only one piece in both entire sets was entirely polished: the geometric human abstraction pictured. That is amazing considering the finish fetish that consumes so many of us here in the West, including me.
What a way to spend an afternoon!
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Created: Sunday, 02 May 1999 04:28
It's early February, sunny with a brilliant blue sky and a high of 65 degrees. Perfect weather has always welcomed me to the "Emerald City." No, not the Emerald City that's known for its green trees, but the City of Tucson, Arizona with its magical Wizard of Ozlike annual extravaganza of an unimaginable kaleidoscope of stones and rocks.
Each year, over a two-week period starting in late January, caravans of gem and stone dealers from across the world overrun this desert city with their billowy white tents and barrels full of rocks. Some may come to sell their entire years production of rhodochrosite, a translucent pink quartz that
forms as stalagmites in Argentinean caves. Others, from Europe, come to trade "micros" mineral specimens to complete their collections. I come to ogle, caress, salivate and if I can't resist their metamorphic advances any further - to buy!
The annual Tucson gem and mineral show is not just a single exhibition. Actually, over 25 independent shows overtake the town like a Mongol horde on amphetamines. Every hotel is sold out months ahead of time and display space is so short that some hotels are even converted into a room-by-room show themselves. Knotted in hallways, over a drink comparing the day's conquests or just passing along their secrets with a wink and smile, rock enthusiasts fill every bar, restaurant and street corner.
Anyone with a fascination for stone knows they have found their very special kind of Oz. Over the last decade I've enjoyed the fossil shows where you can even buy real dinosaur eggs; the AGTA show that is the largest colored gemstone show in the world - full of rubies, emeralds and sapphires, and the mineral shows whose specimens exceed most displays seen in museums. Lately though, my tastes have moved from the small and geometric to the large and amorphous chunks of stone that lie in unassuming dusty piles outside of many of the tents.
Sculpting size stones. Not little sissy sized stones you could pick up and skip across a ri ver, but, stones that you wrestle with to create something new and exciting. Stones the size that can hurt you if you don't treat them with the proper respect. Big, ugly stones on the outside, that, with a little diamond polish, will put on a Cinderella smile for you. And, in this Ozian world, newly discovered stones that have never been seen before. Of course there are the marbles and alabaster. But, how about a 400 pound block of zebra marble with black and white wavy bands offered for $1.20 a pound? This was one of my favorite finds this year. Each year something new appears and, unfortunately due to their unique nature, some rocks are never to be seen again. For instance, several years ago, a couple of Canadian miners on their only trip to Tucson lugged down an 85 pound chunk of amazonite (@$1.50/ lb.) the color of blue glacial ice from their mine above the Arctic Circle. Other dealers carry a wide variety of quartzes (green, pink and purple), agates and calcites (orange and blue) for a few dollars a pound. Piles of stone lie on the ground waiting for someone to take them home and find true love.
For some reason, sculpture in not a big part of the Tucson shows. To most rock hounds, sculpture consists of putting rose quartz in a sphere-making machine and producing pink bowling balls. To the gem dealers, carving means massproduced animals from cheap malachite or lapis in Hong Kong.
But, the opportunity of Tucson is so much greater to someone who recognizes the potential. Boulder sized chunks of jet black labradorite roast in lhe desert sun with a sheen that has a flashy rainbow iridescence like oil on water. It reminds me of a stone I would carve if I had a statement to make about war. Or, take for example, my second favorite find this year, red aventurine. A member of the quartz family, green aventurine from Australia is fairly common. But r can't believe red aventurine in 50 to 100 pound chunks is selling for only $1.50 per pound. Ooola la!! This is gem material that polishes up like quartz with a reddish cast and little red dots. Aventurine is much more exciting than clear optical quartz and a fraction of the price. It's so near Valentines day that all 1 see are oversized hearts made from red aventurine.
Okay, I know quartz is tough to carve, but the Chinese sometimes passed a single piece of jade through several generations to complete a carving. Such a nice complement to our 53.6kbs world! Besides, the Chinese only had sand lacquered onto sticks; we've got industrial strength diamonds sintered to multihorse powered tools. Handily, all the major gem and rock equipment manufacturers are also on hand with an enormous variety of tools to assist you in your cutting and polishing needs. So while you're loading that zebra marble, labradorite and red aventurine into the 01' pickup, check out the diamond band saws, carving wheels and water cooled diamond sanders at wholesale prices. Of course, not everything 1s inexpensive. The queen of the show was a $20,000 piece of perfectly blue chrysocolla the size of a small microwave casually reclining on the grass of the Day's Inn courtyard. Big chunks of gem quality lapis from the same mine in Afghanistan that has provided lapis for thousands of years and produced, by grinding it up and adding a touch of oil, the shade of ultramarine used in Rembrandt's paintings is always available for a princely price. One of my favorite stones looks like a
spotted jade embedded with cherries. Zoisite is a tremendously beautiful ruby ore that I find more attractive than the opaque rubies themselves. The Indian jade-like matrix polishes up like the finest translucent green jade and the rubies vary from raisin-sized to grapefruits. The cheaper versions of zoisite run around $] 0 to $15 a pound. Given the toughness of the rubies, you don't need a lot of this to keep you busy, so I think zoisite is very affordable at this price range. An ambitious jade carver up to the ruby challenge might have had the constitution to ask the price of the 200 pound monolithic block of perfect zoisite. Passing only with an obligatory curtsey, I dared not ask that question myself.
Instead, my eyes caught the sight of a football sized piece of gem quality opaque chrysoprase the color of key lime pie. As I picked it up to the light and carefully rotated it looking for flaws, I felt the beginnings of a burgeoning relationship. No, it wasn't the typical translucent blue green, gemmy Australian chrysoprase. But, it did have a very warm and uniquely charming look glowing from within its tight crystalline structure. The retail price was $50/1b., but the wholesale price for the 30-pound little minx was only $900. In my mind it takes a lot of skill to turn beige limestone into art. Ms. chrysoprase shouted to me that it could easily surmount all of my insecurities about my sculpting skill, and create an object of glorious beauty all by herself. Heck, this little hussy of a rock could bounce out of your flatbed going 70 miles an hour on 1-5 and what was left would still make Brancusi look like an amateur. The Siren was calling ever louder. One hell of a good lookin' slone! Still, there'd be all that explaining to do at home and I suspect it's not worth a divorce even though 1 would consider a temporary separalion and buying the Green Goddess on installments. No, I promised myself that this year I would only buy as much as I could carve. Ha!
At Tucson, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. By next year, the largest piece of raw chrysoprase I've ever seen will be in the arms of another. As I sit on the curb waiting for my ride out of Oz, I find solace in my box full of new rocks (3 inch thick tiger eye @ $5/lb. - should I go on?). The sky is somehow an even brighter blue and I don't care anymore if I ever get around to carving every single piece of rock I've acquired. My rocks just make me happy.
For anyone willing to tempt fate, the show details:
The Tucson shows are generally scheduled a year in advance. There is only one weekend, typically the first weekend in February, where the majority of shows overlap. Several shows carrying large rough are situated along 1-10. You should plan well in advance if you want decent accommodations at reasonable rates. Having a tax J.D. number (or some friend's) with a rock or jewelry sounding name will help get you into the wholesale shows or negotiate wholesale prices. Pack sunglasses and more courage than the Tinman to say no or save yourself the trouble and just pack lots of cash.
