Bird themes are haunting Ceramic Break Sculpture Park
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'Hi Y'all .... If you come out to the park to visit you won’t see this ostrich. I got sick of her and her sick mate terrorizing my studio. They were clucky and looking for calcium to make their eggs. They broke all my plaster moulds and then ate them. Using my tables as barriers I tried to exclude Betty and Betunia, but they crashed through and hissed their disapproval when I prodded them to get them to vamoose. They are big heavy animals and it’s frightening when one sticks its extended beak in your face. Finally Nerida called a wildlife farm by Inverell. A former sheep farmer with hairy arms corralled the two miscreants and took them away to where a handsome male ostrich awaited. Art is a journey and it’s littered with diversionary paths strewn with rejections. Sometimes you have to stop and think why you put up with the road trips from hell to deliver your sculpture, then pick it up 10 days later. Or you enter a contest knowing there’s no way that you have a chance to win and then you win anyway! It defies logic. You get back on the road and just hope that you’re heading forward. What keeps me in the game? My late friend, artist Chris Humphreys, said that the role of the artist was to instruct and tell people what art is about. I liked Chris because he liked my art. When I made 2nd place in the sculpture category in the 1998 Inverell Show and he heaped praise on "Moondance" from the Alchemy series, I was hooked. That sort of adoration happens only once in a blue moon, but it is like manna from heaven. So what keeps me in the game? I feel that one day after chasing my tail around the globe, I'm going to crack it and create something that people will remember, not because it's new or notorious but because it's so good it cannot be ignored. Maybe by then I can tell them what art is all about. The only thing that
makes what I do different from thousands of other sculptors, many of whom I feel
are more talented than me, is that every moment of every day I'm obsessed with
my big project, Ceramic Break Sculpture Park. Most of my creative effort goes
into advancing the park. It's a narrow focus with a universal scope. It's what
keeps me in the game. |
Background: I moved to Australia in August 1995 and decided that sink or swim I was going to create art for the rest of my life. I sculpt small and medium sized bronzes usually in narrative series, which are very dear to my heart as are the larger works sprouting up around the park. I’m trying to create 1-2 sculptures a year for the park. So far there are 15 installed and a few more on the wing.
A Wonder A Natural Wonder The creation is the best part of art. There is nothing like the buzz when you’re sculpting in the studio. The hours drift away and then the ostriches appear and warp everything. I show a lot. Some of the highlights: “Bloody Hard Yakka”, 1998, was my first show. I filled the Chapel Gallery in Melbourne with 41 works including paintings, drawings, woodcarvings and bronze sculptures. We even had a Maori dance group help out with a performance at the opening. I felt that my new career was really off and running! “Alchemy, golden dreams come true” was my second solo show that premiered 1999 at the Stanthorpe Regional Gallery in Queensland, Australia. We made a book of the series. Alchemy was my third series and it is still my favourite work to date. Alchemy in many ways is what I’m trying to achieve with my art, a fusion between art and literature. The Alchemy narrative is a cracker! The series also showed at The Nave Museum in Victoria, Texas in 2010 and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado in 2013.
“From Far Formosa”, 2001, was a show I put together with Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-Chung. Two of Yao’s photos were so hot that the framer didn’t want to touch them. Edgy to say the least! But sometimes edgy is good.
“The Tiger Club”, 2003, an installation of bronze, fibre optics and mirrors took 2 years to sculpt. The work premiered at the Castlemaine Festival in Victoria, and then at Australia’s Biggest Chook Show our grand opening at Ceramic Break. Later it was shown at the Stanthorpe Gallery 2010. This work investigates the sordid side of male culture. It’s quite gruesome and fun at the same time. I’d like to upgrade its base so that it better complements the sculpture reflecting the time I invested making it. Francisco de Goya created many wondrous series of prints. His most famous perhaps is The Disasters of War, which documents the atrocities of the Franco-Spanish War. My favorite Goya series is Los Caprichos, a roving twisted look at Spanish culture. My series based on Los Caprichos showed at The Castlemaine Regional Gallery in Victoria as part of the exhibition “The Enlightenment Never Happened, 2009. Bits and pieces of Los Caprichos have been in shows and won contests in Shanghai, Japan, Italy, New York, L.A. and Texas. The series is narrative art at its best. Detail of "Fortune" from Los Caprichos. Recently I finished my 12th bronze series The Frost Giants that we adapted into our second book. It’s an edgy narrative that was difficult to sculpt because my main character is lovingly conceived for a very big fall. I showed the series in Melbourne, 2011 and Sydney, 2012. A man with a greasy baseball cap sits in a restaurant with a bear-claw fork full of spaghetti. His wide set blue eyes stare as he bites large chunks off the blob on his fork. He is a dead ringer for the frost giant “Tiny”. It’s gratifying when your creation comes to life.
The Frost Giant 'Tiny' recently seen in an Italian Restaurant! In The Glass House series, 2013 the topiary in the garden is enchanted. The Yellow Slipper post race party is in full swing as the tragic figure of The Lonesome Cowboy comes to life in the shrubbery. It’s fun sculpting cowboys, but I often think why am I doing this? The first composition in the series “The Boudoir” showed in the 2012 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize in Sydney and at the Gagliardi Gallery in London.
The Boudoir My full CV is included on the CV page. |
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kerry@cbreaksculpturepark.com.au
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