94F-2 June 24

The itch was still strong, encouraged by success of 94F-1, my first sculpture in seven years. At least it didn't fall over, and brushing the sculpture brought a revelation: those wonderful horizons. It wound up looking like something a thousand years old. In packing the sand for this day's effort I was much more careful, and the pile was much more solid. I was still thinking about arches and domes, but this one straightened out a bit. Its major new characteristic is the relief carved into various surfaces. Until this piece, I'd been concerned only with the shape of the sculpture, but with this one I started working on the shapes of the sculpture's elements. It also had new photographic possibilities. The tide rose, washing the sculpture's base, and with the smoothness provided by water and its reflections the sculpture became a living part of the scene. I didn't stay to see the end. As I worked on this sculpture, I noticed, from the corner of my eye, a man walking around. Occasionally he'd stop and write something in a notebook, then wander some more on the flat behind the breakwater under the summer sun. When I was nearly finished, he came over and told me that my work had inspired him. The notebook was his journal, and he read aloud what he'd written that day. It's transcribed below, verbatim.

The Sculptor has his unnamable shape towering from the sand. He is surrounded by two shorlines; they tell him just which grains to leave and which to brush lovingly away. His is one of Nature's unlimited possibilities of form, of shape. He tends toward long, smooth slopes and thin, narrowing arches, defying his own unstyle with a cove in the apex of it all; or perhaps the cove is an arch in forming? Empty though the cove may be, it holds in its hollow breast the whispering wind which whirls through wailing the silent truth, heard in a wordless glimpse. Its shadows, sharp from the setting sun, dramatize what is perpetually evolving, like the slow forming of a canyon, and as the sun sets, a slow tale of creation is told. He is but a tool of the sand and sea; the animal scraping the soft ground for survival, for truth. He piles and strips layer upon layer as the perfection of his experiment unfolds. Yet it is unknowingly perfect already, made so by Nature's nameless and omniscient law, and the sculptor's simple will to create, to do something; the soul experimenting with objects, yearning for shape, form, image, to touch the hearts of passersby who marvel at they know not what. His footwork and movement carve a natural, functional pedestal, that shrouds the figurine with dutiful truth. This laborious sculpture of the footsteps tells of fierceness, of freedom, of the love of its treader. Sculpting while conversing, he teaches others of his ways, and thus conquers our most hidden challenge: the fusion of Art and LIfe the marriage of Creation and Existence the oneness of Love and the Moment. He silently feels the abstract (yet real) connection of everything. How will he know when it's finished? He won't, only knowing instinctually when to retire his tools letting the rising tide take over the reigns of changing the sand into yet another formless form. And so it is and shall just be. John Braz Venice California, June 24, 1994

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sgp4note.htm 1999 February 14