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Eye of Jefferson
About Me
- Larry
- When I was in Claiborne,on the Eastern Shore of Maryland just before Christmas, staying with a friend, I walked up the road one morning to what had been the ferry dock (prior to the building of the Bay Bridge) and is now mainly a boat ramp. I always walk up there, morning and night--go out to the end of the dock and look out over the water. This time, I saw a pair of Bald Eagles. A good omen for the New Year of 2012, I hope! That's my intro for now--
At the suggestion of a friend, I began to contemplate a portrait sculpture of Barack Obama shortly after his election in 2008. Due to the many images and posters of him that were circulating at the time, I decided instead to do a full figure sculpture. Because Obama gained considerable popularity while on the campaign trail through participating in informal basketball “scrimmages” and basket-shooting contests, and because of what I saw as the “metaphorical power” of this activity (Obama as a candidate who could “aim” and “score,” and who inspired excitement among voters), I decided upon a sculpture of him in the act of performing a jump shot. So I began working on a 1/3 lifesize model, with armature and clay, on the basis of this conception, hiring a model for anatomical accuracy.
ReplyDeleteHowever, once President, Barack Obama was soon bogged down in the pitched battles over passage of the Affordable Health Care Act in the House of Representatives, among other things. The smiling, confident candidate shooting baskets while campaigning quickly began to seem irrelevant to the man shouldering the burdensome duties of Chief Executive. So I felt obliged to change the sculpture, to reflect changes in the man, and over time I began to make alterations, finally arriving at a figure who, slightly bent, stood stock still, clasping the ball with both hands, as if deliberating whether to pass, or shoot. In fact, I deliberately chose to work on some of those alterations while listening to NPR radio reporting of the House vote on “Obamacare.”
This pose, though relevant, nevertheless aroused dissatisfaction in me. The evident paralysis in the pose was disturbing. How could I leave President Obama, and the nation along with him, even metaphorically, as sculpture—in ‘stasis’! But what to do?
A long period elapsed, in which the sculpture stood idle. Finally, many months later, in a Chi-Gong class led by Robin Murphy at the YMCA in Blacksburg, the answer came to me, while we were going through a movement known as “Swimming Dragon plays with the ball of Chi.” In this movement, grasping an invisible sphere representing Chi, or fundamental energy, the participant, feet firm and body balanced, rolls the “ball of Chi” from one side of his/her body to the other, and back, in an easy, fluid, attentive manner. This was it!
With this inspiration, I went back into the studio, and once again began manipulating and reworking the clay figure. After many refinements over time, I arrived at the figure shown in the attached images (painted so that viewers can better see what the figure will look like when cast in bronze). May President Barack Obama—and legislators---handle the “Chi” of America with balance, attention, and fluid wisdom. Amen!