Casting, Collaboration and Compassion

All of our experience – growing up, loving, losing those we love, becoming politicized and electrified by history and culture – all of these are the mold that forms us – all of our struggles, our joys, our inspirations – leave their marks on our pattern. We are the expression of this impression.

Life is infinitely collaborative. We collaborate with nature, with culture, with one another. We collect, reflect and are infected with wonder – wonder at the migration of cranes, wonder at the distance between stars, wonder at the feeling of touch. It is this wonder, this collaboration between ourselves and others, between ourselves and everything we do, that inspires us.

Compassion is the material we are formed of. It is the foundation of our humanity, creating our ability to experience and empathize with others. As the mold prints to the pattern, empathizing with every ridge and well, the casting forms a final collaboration between cause and effect, idea and form, material and process, a collective reflection of experience.

The pattern is inspired by the mind, the casting is inspired by the mold, the formation and transformation of matter is inspired by the material of dreams. Sculpture is a passionate collaboration between the physical and the metaphysical, the non-existing, the existing and the act of bringing into existence. There is no greater honor as a human being than this, to bring into existence.

Intimate Immensity Wrought - Essay by Diane Mullin, Senior Curator, Weisman Art Museum, MN

Landscapes and Portraits - Essay by Amy Hamlin, Professor of Art History, St. Catherine University, MN