Vladimir is Here . . . at Last.

  

Vladimir has emerged from the block of Indiana limestone salvaged from renovation of a building on U W’s Red Square.  I don’t know which building nor the block’s purpose -- a short column 12” x 12” x 48”.  Its fresh surfaces suggest it was indoors, out of the weather.  Whatever, the block was now mine and Vladimir, I imagined, waited inside.  That was 2012 -- a six-year gestation!

It all started in 1989 when I saw the Irish National Theatre Society’s production of Waiting For Godot.  As night falls, Estragon gets chilled so Vladimir takes off his coat and drapes it around his buddy.  But now Vladimir is cold; this lanky Irish actor hunched up, back to audience, long arms wrapped around slapping his back, trying to warm himself.  That image had stayed with me all those years.

And so it began – an overly ambitious project for a presumptuous beginner who had only completed three works up to then.  


But, . . . I posed, . . .

.


. . . lined out the block


. . . and started to chip away. 

Sabah Al-Dharer working with fellow carver John Gilbreath

Whatever small success I have had with that block of limestone six years later is due entirely to the coaching, encouragement and teaching of my friend and mentor Sabah Al=Dhaher.  Sabah, a gifted graduate of the Fine Arts Institute of Basra, never got his hands on stone until he landed here in 1994 after escaping the turmoil of Saddam and Desert Storm.  

He taught me that carving rock is about light and shadow, about shaping the air around the mass, about abhorring a straight line, about nuance and inference – and about perseverance.

Off and on over the years Vladimir slowly took shape.  And he has taken on new meanings – not just cold but anguished – “he looks scared” a child visiting the stone yard said.  “Trying to hold himself together” a woman at a Pratt open house remarked.

I was never sure I was finished; even now, looking at these pictures of Vladimir in place in our front yard, I am still not sure I finished, an anxiety I have had about all my pieces.  It’s more that I stopped than finished. 

But here he is.  I now think of him as “H2O” – Homeless, Hopeless, Out’o’luck.  Struggling to hold himself together but yet grounded – perhaps an apt symbol for our times?

My next project: a 3-dimensional Yin and Yang of pure white marble and multi-hued Brucite, suspended apart, not yet conjoined but yearning for one another.  This one won’t take six years – I hope.  I started on it this morning.