Karl Saliter: Sculptor at Large

A friend of mine owns a gallery, and offered to trade me two very cool masonic chairs for art a few years ago.  I live in an old church which was a Masonic Hall (do you capitalize that?) and loved the chairs, so I took them and agreed.  Moving stuff around recently, I remembered my end of the bargain.  He told me he has always wanted a stone birdbath, so I got a rock.

I cut a bunch of tic tac toe lines into the stone, then chiseled ‘em off.

I smoothed the bowl out some, then with helpful feedback from daughter Samantha, decided to add depth. Cut, knock, repeat.  I carved steps into the sides of the bowl, which are cool but hard to see in this photo.

I found two other likely stones, some 1/2″ steel rods, a little drilling, a little welding, and voila birdbath.

“Conscious Contact”, just recently conceived, is a meditation chamber with a birth canal entrance.  Drawings by the awesome Terri Moore.

I love my kitchen.

So over coffee Saturday, I thought.

And thinking, made this

To fit here:  

And took it to the shop, to add some stained glass.

Here it is installed. I love it!

Just finishing “Rig”, an oil drilling/syringe hybrid sculpture, for a show at 18 Rabbit Gallery in Ft Lauderdale.  ”Environmentalism by Proxy”.  Reading their call for artists, which read in part

“We seek works that act as agents of Environmentalism, stand-ins, through which we can examine the movement and the relationship we have with it.”

I was inspired to make work.  I contacted Leah Brown, a hell of an artist herself:

http://leahbrownart.com/

and proposed a series of five pieces, with a post-apocalyptic approach.

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My daughter Samantha Saliter, and partner Terri Moore, joined me.  We formed the “Underloft Collaborative”.  We made an ark rocket, with couples escaping into it.  We made five pieces in total, and mailed them to Florida today.

Terri made a globe in decay, Sam a group of scientists gathering information to take on the rocket.  I did one on tarot cards, with people collecting the wisdom from them, to bring on this journey.

I was working to finish “Rig” tonight: it is the late piece I’ll mail Monday.  Having screwed up trying to put black paint into one hypodermic needle, I raided my garbage can for one of the ones I threw out, earlier today, when I thought I was done with this piece.  There was something about being out in the snow in my pj’s, flashlight in hand, rooting through my garbage for a needle that felt, well, desperate.

I remembered something which is true.  Something I have no problem with at all.  I remembered that I am truly my sculpture’s bitch.

From the book of poems “The Gift”, this bit.

“… just keep making love with God’s child

Form.”

I am starting to really love Hafiz.

“reach” 2005, 18×18′, stone, steel.

Two sunny days have helped me return to work, where I’ve been happily starting a new series of small stone cubes.  On a recent studio visit to my dear friend Joel Schapira, we spoke of the special territory multiples can occupy in artmaking.

One of the things frequently interrupting art making (in the guise of serving it) is the voice of the critic.  Making multiples quiets that voice, letting an artist shortcut through the very twisted path of “Is this good enough?” to  ”this is simply what it is”.

Joel took a workshop in collage years ago.  The teacher said,  ”sometimes, feeling stuck, I just make parts.”  We liked this approach, because the pressure is off, when one is just making parts.  I often do that, drilling holes into stones, adding metal.  It helped these past two days, having lots of prepared parts at hand.

Making multiples can be freeish: knowing you’ll be doing another, that the one you are making doesn’t need to carry all the weight, eases the burden.

The Boston Harbor Shipyard will be hosting an international outdoor sculpture show this winter, and “Apogee” is among the works chosen for exhibit.

I was invited to a show at the Imperial Center for Arts and Sciences in Rocky mount, NC.

http://www.imperialcentre.org/

So last week, I seriously overloaded my truck, and went down to deliver “Particle/Wave” for a year lease.

They had an excellent crane, and the piece weighed in at 4700 pounds.  I love my little trailer!  I was very scared going down, even though it was only from Charlottesville, VA, where the lease was over at Artinplace.

Sculpture in the air moves me.