Making Sculpture

My story: I had an unconventional beginning as an artist.  When I was a child I did not draw or paint, I melted my crayons.  I was attracted to those activities involving repeated actions and construction: embroidery, braiding, weaving: I made gum wrapper chains, lanyards, kites, potholders and models.  I lived in Hawaii, the Philippines and Japan. I have significant memories and waking dreams of my parents’ garden: warm cherry tomatoes, roses, worms, bees, butterflies, grass, ants, fences, dirt, fireflies, mudpies and snapdragons.  I believe it was my first studio.

I discovered and cultivated a relationship to revere and process in that outdoor childhood space and an appreciation and an understanding for the relationships between:

order and chaos

heavy and light

control and impulse

the one and the many

the known and unknown

I have learned to value the necessity of building upon the creative impulse and to ask better questions.

The Concept: The ideas in my work reside in memory. Forgotten experiences…a smell, a sight or touch.  I make the work to navigate towards an understanding of the outside.  When I begin, there is an intuitive connection to the materials. In the process of working, the meaning of the piece begins to unfold and as this happens I am curious to see what it will become.  My curiosity sustains the activity of making the work and if doesn't occur, the piece is set aside.  There are many false starts.

The Materials: I work with: wax, steel, plaster, glass, wood, rubber, plastic, cement and paper.  They can be liquid and solid, warm and cool, soft and hard.

The Process:  I stack, glue, sand, crochet, rub, weave, wind, unwind, cut, polish, tap and drill.  The materials dictate specific repetitive and meditative actions.

Multiples: I am curious about the relationship between the one and the many.  Making the one, I learn something of the "essence" of the relationship between the materials and the single form. Making and exhibiting the many, the viewer is given opportunity and time to look again, and again. Repetition can often reveal the essential thing through the smallest detail.

Susan Martin

2010