Life, I always say, is what happens when you're making plans. * Sometimes my life follows the plans I am making, sometimes not.
My plan was to be an artist. Actually art was the only thing I seemed to be able to do day after day and be interested and involved in so I decided that I should learn a trade to support me wherever it was that my art would take me. And I did learn a trade. I studied with Rudi Staffel at Tyler art school while I was in high school and I became a proficient potter, I began to work in porcelain. Then I graduated, went to Callifornia, got a motorcycle, crashed the motorcycle, learned goldsmithing and finally got a degree in sculpture from Brandeis University (and incidentally learned a lot about sculpting and sculpture from Peter Grippe). Brandeis put me in the way of a Watson Foundation fellowship which for some miracle I was awarded (and it really was a miracle). The grant allowed me to go to Italy to learn bronze casting which I felt would be useful for my figurative sculpture.
While in Pietrasanta, Italy for a year I learned that I hated bronze casting, that I was actually an abstract sculptor and that I could learn another language if I really worked hard and lived where it is spoken. I also met Gianni Benvenuti who was a painter and a sculptor and considerably older than I. Gianni taught me the rudiments of mold making and insisted I needed to learn to carve marble for the abstract sculptures I was now creating. He followed me back to the states (despite having sworn he would never be involved with an American or go to America). In America he did teach me to sculpt marble and helped me refine my Italian, we never spoke English. He was my companion 24/7 for 28 years and was the love of my life. He died in 2005.
In those 28 years with Gianni after I came back from Italy I earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, carved quite a few abstract sculptures and I purchased and did my best to care for a large building in the center of Germantown in Philadelphia, PA. When we bought the building I planned to rent the part we did not need for our house and studios to other artists. After we bought it Gianni decided he didn't want anyone else in the building. Life is never simple and our life was no exception. I did not sculpt as much as I would have liked during those years. In the years surrounding Gianni's death I did very little in the way of any kind of artwork.
I have been taking photos seriously since 2005, and working on making studio spaces for other visual artists at my place at 47 High Street, and creating a model for a sculpture here and there (right now I have 13 I need to mold). All in all I had the part about being an artist right, art of various types is the only thing that holds my interest for hours, then days, then weeks and years. It gives me satisfaction and substance.
I am now finishing up the construction of artist's studios at 47 High Street, soon I expect to be spending a lot more time with my sculpture and my photography. But life is what happens while I am making plans. You may have noticed that I never mentioned making my living creating ceramics. In fact I never did.
*the original quote was by Allen Saunders:" Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." quoted by Readers Digest in 1957. John Lennon use it in a song, he did not make it up.
My plan was to be an artist. Actually art was the only thing I seemed to be able to do day after day and be interested and involved in so I decided that I should learn a trade to support me wherever it was that my art would take me. And I did learn a trade. I studied with Rudi Staffel at Tyler art school while I was in high school and I became a proficient potter, I began to work in porcelain. Then I graduated, went to Callifornia, got a motorcycle, crashed the motorcycle, learned goldsmithing and finally got a degree in sculpture from Brandeis University (and incidentally learned a lot about sculpting and sculpture from Peter Grippe). Brandeis put me in the way of a Watson Foundation fellowship which for some miracle I was awarded (and it really was a miracle). The grant allowed me to go to Italy to learn bronze casting which I felt would be useful for my figurative sculpture.
While in Pietrasanta, Italy for a year I learned that I hated bronze casting, that I was actually an abstract sculptor and that I could learn another language if I really worked hard and lived where it is spoken. I also met Gianni Benvenuti who was a painter and a sculptor and considerably older than I. Gianni taught me the rudiments of mold making and insisted I needed to learn to carve marble for the abstract sculptures I was now creating. He followed me back to the states (despite having sworn he would never be involved with an American or go to America). In America he did teach me to sculpt marble and helped me refine my Italian, we never spoke English. He was my companion 24/7 for 28 years and was the love of my life. He died in 2005.
In those 28 years with Gianni after I came back from Italy I earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, carved quite a few abstract sculptures and I purchased and did my best to care for a large building in the center of Germantown in Philadelphia, PA. When we bought the building I planned to rent the part we did not need for our house and studios to other artists. After we bought it Gianni decided he didn't want anyone else in the building. Life is never simple and our life was no exception. I did not sculpt as much as I would have liked during those years. In the years surrounding Gianni's death I did very little in the way of any kind of artwork.
I have been taking photos seriously since 2005, and working on making studio spaces for other visual artists at my place at 47 High Street, and creating a model for a sculpture here and there (right now I have 13 I need to mold). All in all I had the part about being an artist right, art of various types is the only thing that holds my interest for hours, then days, then weeks and years. It gives me satisfaction and substance.
I am now finishing up the construction of artist's studios at 47 High Street, soon I expect to be spending a lot more time with my sculpture and my photography. But life is what happens while I am making plans. You may have noticed that I never mentioned making my living creating ceramics. In fact I never did.
*the original quote was by Allen Saunders:" Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." quoted by Readers Digest in 1957. John Lennon use it in a song, he did not make it up.