A sculpture, a parable, and the recovery from personal trauma
“...do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.
Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25)
This is a hand built ceramic sculpture, cold finished with oxidized metals and patinas, and hand gold leafed on top. It represents about 3 months of work but for me symbolizes ten years of my life.
Those who have been following my studio artwork posts know about my history as a hospital corpsman with the US Marines, doing two combat tours in Iraq.
I might not have been very specific but there it is. The aftermath included several musculoskeletal injuries, a brain injury, and PTSD. I've spent my 20's and the first 2 years of my 30's working on recovery and getting to understand, accept, and deal with this new life as well as finding ways to heal and grow.
It was a lot more traumatic at first. It was a gut punch, going from being a top achiever in the prime of life, feeling like I had unlimited potential to suddenly being lost in a brain that no longer performed the way that it once had and was filled with turbulent thoughts, memories, and emotions that kept me in a constant interior battle.
I had my sights set on being a doctor, and had my brain stayed in full function there is a good chance that's where I would be.
Instead, holding down any job suddenly seemed unlikely and facing overwhelming feelings of displacement and disillusionment, I threw myself into pursuing studio art, a lifelong hobby and one of the few things that I was able to reclaim after the brain injury.
I wanted to create things that were both stylistically and mentally challenging. (the brain power might have ebbed but the ego definitely had not)
Firing stoneware in a kiln is quite literally a trial by fire. Those who don't perfectly balance, compress, dry, vent, and prep their sculptures will be left looking at a pile of broken clay when they open the doors.
Needless to say, there is a lot more incentive to create ceramic sculpture that is squat and solid.
Here is a failed sculpture firing of mine
"Lilies of the Field" was a tripod that stood about 27 inches tall, weighed about 50 pounds and balanced on three contact points the size of dimes.
It survived the firing, but lost a leg in the process.
The great thing about being an artist versus a surgeon is that losing a leg during an operation doesn't mean your career is over.
It took on more meaning for me: whereas the theme of the original concept had been about balance of mind, body, and emotion, the finished work was now a symbol of finding a way to keep on living when that delicate balance has been drastically interrupted.
The patina exterior surface symbolized the beauty that comes from weathering life's elements.
The golden interior spoke to the beauty and uniqueness of each human soul.
Then there was the peg leg that I carved out of maple wood, purposely trying to keep it looking rough and out of place, but still functional in keeping the damned thing standing.
I showed it in a few exhibitions, and it was well received but then it ended up being a 50 pound anchor that was being lugged around the country each time I moved, and it was beginning to feel like it was time for it to move away from home.
So, I sold it for 75.00.
For the amount of work that went into it, it was a pittance, but the gentleman who came to look at it wanted to know about the story behind it and said that he himself was trying to recover from emotional scarring and that the piece spoke to the struggle that he was going through.
So, of course I had to let him have it for what was in his pockets, because at the end of the day an artist does not create for an empty room, and there comes a time when everything we create must take on a life of its own.
Back to the parable that this sculpture is titled after.
Quick and to the point: life drags us all down and breaks us in ways we didn't know we could be broken. I am now going through a divorce and experiencing new levels of grief I didn't know that I could feel.
We can let these experiences break us and end up a pile of clay at the bottom of the kiln, or we can own them, learn from them, grow from them, and let them turn us into something that might not have been what we envisioned at the beginning of our life, but is still beautiful and admirable in its own right.
There are more ways to measure our lives than bank accounts. I know there is a lot more to that book of Matthew bible quote than just that but I'm not really a Christian at this point in my life: they are just strong words that really reached out and grabbed my mind.
(There is also a really good book "The Lilies of the Field" about a guy who helps nuns build a church that again furthers the image of the real beauty in life being the actions we take, not the things we own)
So, my fine Steemit followers, go forth and be a lily of the field.
Please let me know what you think of this discussion, even if it is to tell me to not use Bible quotes out of context =p
