The Creation Process of “Sea to Sky”

The first stage of carving “Sea to Sky” my 1000lb Italian marble humpback whale sculpture, began when I went to my supplier to pick out some larger stones for 3 upcoming projects. I had a couple stones in mind for a polar bear and grizzly bear that I planned on carving and then wanted one more other stones for something that was not yet determined.

My goal with these larger stones that I was picking out was to create 3 large scale museum quality sculptures. I do my best whenever possible to work at the edge of my ability. When I am pushing myself to that edge and creating art on that threshold, I feel like that is how I actually get better. That is one of the things I love doing as an artist and loved in the beginning as well. I remember in my early teens setting the goal for myself to simply make my next drawing better than the one I did before it.

When you think a lot about stone carving you end up contemplating the idea of permanence which presents an interesting dynamic especially when we are living in the age of cheap products that are often designed to break, and yet here I am creating something that I want to last and be a part of this world for thousands of years.

The idea to do 2 humpback whales came months after I had purchased the stone and had it delivered to my studio.

When I first noticed this particular marble block in the warehouse “it had potential” that’s what I look for in a stone; potential!

 It was a long rectangular shaped block of white Italian marble which could be stood up tall or utilized horizontally. This flexibility was great and so decided to go for it.

The thing about stone carving is there is risk involved. It’s part of the process. You never know what you are going to get until you actually start carving the stone. Sometimes the color or consistency and density is much different than you thought, I have learned to just embrace the risk and go for it!

Once the stone was delivered to my studio it sat outside and I passed it each morning as I arrived to carve and then again when I left for the day. Over the course of the next 3 months I would every now and then think about what I wanted to do with that stone.

I had originally considered doing one large humpback but thought I would lose too much stone and that it wouldn’t have worked compositionally. In retrospect it probably would have, but there was just something not sitting right about doing the single whale. I also developed a concept for a standing polar bear, but again, something just wasn’t sitting right.

Once I started considering doing 2 whales together instead of just the one, that’s when the idea really started to come together, where suddenly the point just seemed to click together and lock in. So I began developing some ideas of how I could carve 2 whales together and ultimately made my decision to execute of pair of humpback whales out of this 2500lb block of Italian marble.

I really liked this idea of being able utilize this block of marble in a vertical formation. It stood almost 6’ high. I find most stones have certain unique innate qualities and attributes about their shape that inform the direction of the design, like “going with the flow”. For me “going with the flow” of this 2500lb marble block meant finding a design that would utilize the height of the piece and so align with a potential that was already evident in the stone itself. I felt it would have been a shame if I would have flipped this stone onto its side to carve something and miss out on the full glory of its height!

Once I decided to move forward with this vertical design, I made arrangements to have my landlord assist me with his forklift. Together we managed to stand it up and slide into position at the front entrance of my studio. Having larger machinery around to help with moving these larger pieces is absolutely critical.

Once in place I began carving.

All the while also already thinking about the end and how to move this piece once its done or even looking at questions like how would something like this eventually be moved into a clients home. All of these kinds of questions go into actually forming what one sees as the final execution of the piece. A blend between practical, conceptual, and purely aesthetic considerations all merged into one expression.

And so I began.

The design of having two whales front to back with one lower whale moving across the stone lengthwise with another positioned vertically was the original vision and done in part to maximize as much stone as possible while providing a structure that would be stable in supporting the weight of itself. I also wanted the front and back of one whale to be visible from each side.

I remember the first day of carving things moved fast and I started carving on the tail and getting the length of the body of the lower whale in place.

I find you never really know how something is going to turn out until you just start doing it. Things always change from the original idea once you begin expressing that idea into physical reality, and this piece was no exception.

I originally believed I could have a piece like this complete in 2.5 or 3 months when in reality it took 4 and felt like a million years of work.

I was thinking the entire project of creating these 3 museum quality works would take around 5 to 7 months. I have completed 2 in 6 months so far. Half a year for 2 works of art.

I was not expecting the amount of resistance I experienced during the process of creating this piece.

This piece was very much a lesson in resistance. By resistance, I mean that experience where you ‘don’t feel like doing it’ I have learned that one cannot necessarily expect to never have to face and walk through that experience of “not really feeling like doing something” and with this piece I faced that a lot and had to walk through that experience and many times to have that experience transform into a nice flow of movement and ease.

This sculpture was actually one of the most complex designs I have undertaken with having these two whales intersecting belly to belly along a carefully achieved center axis, again another one of those points where you just don’t know if its going to work or not.

I work in a very direct and freestyle way. I prefer to plan, but to not plan to much, I rarely do a model first and find I work directly on the stone and develop my composition more in real-time working from various photos. I like doing it this way because for me it brings the whole process alive where its kind of forming in front of my own eyes also. I don’t use pointer tools where I am simply enlarging a smaller model. Instead I focus on developing, pushing, and refining my own inner sense of balance and measurement. Yes I will often use a tape measure but the idea is to not take the “eye” out of the process. Meaning the artists ‘eye’ as that tool that can be used in a very precise way to calculate and measure and understand proportions and distances, and flow and rhythm and balance. To say its just the ‘eye’ is not really accurate. Its more like your whole body, being, and presence you are using. This is the ultimate tool and is why I work in ways that support the refinement of this tool. The tool of the self. Because at the end of the day when I leave the studio, I walk out with this tool still with me, because the tool is me, and is utilized in my day to day life.

This was the first time I  carved humpback whales which meant learning the anatomy for the first time to the best of my ability to attain the level of naturalism and detail I was wanting. This added another layer of complexity to the entire process and made for much more information processing.

Art is basically a specific form of information processing. Some people are trained to process ideas and write them out in words in different forms like business emails or movie scripts, or novels, ect. Some people train themselves to process numbers in a specific way or even athletes are processing information and then expressing themselves according to that. I find working from hundreds of photos to create these sculptures requires a specific absorption and processing of information that I have actually been practicing since I was 7 years old doing the drawing exercises on the back of the Cheerios box, or in art school drawing still-lives or people in coffee shops or drawing from photos.

I had found a 20 minute video of swimming humpback whales which became one of my main references throughout the carving process. I find videos to be helpful because they show more distinctly how the muscles and anatomy works and moves together as the animal twists and turns.

One of the more challenging aspects of this carvings was remaining sane while I walked the 4 month creative process. Because this was a new animal for me and a different design than I have done before there was a twinge of doubt inside me where I wondered if this was actually going to even work out. Then there were a few tricky areas of the sculpture where I wasn’t sure how I was going to execute, but the thing with stone sculpture is you have no choice but to simply continue walking because the only way to really know how something will work out is if you just do it.

And after 4 months things came together and the piece is complete and now standing tall in Mountain Galleries in Whistler BC.

That is another thing. A piece like this is always a collaboration or culmination of various points working together. Mountain Galleries is a well established gallery and when I signed on to be represented by them around a year and half ago, I was curios what would happen to my art and what new forms would emerge as a result of this new relationship. And this monumental humpback whale sculpture definitely one of those forms that was born out of this gallery/artist relationship.

Its like plants only grow if the environment can support the growth of that particular species. You need all the elements to be perfect and working together to feed the growth of the emerging life form. The same goes with art where art emerges from the moment, from the here where in an interesting way the environment kind of determines what expressions emerge from it and I am just one part of that environment.

I was relieved to finally have this piece sitting in the gallery. These works can be very consuming and it was hard to focus on anything else with this piece still sitting in my studio as I made arrangements to have it transported from my studio into the gallery.

It sits in the gallery now and there is a void in my studio ready to be filled with some new sculpture creations what ever they might be. Time will tell.