Broken Sculpture Broken Dreams

I faced some adversity in the studio this last week.

I had spent the week working on a new abstract piece and it was set to be my largest abstract piece I have done to date. It was really beginning to arrive at its final form and I was entering the final hours of the piece when suddenly a huge section of the carving broke off. My heart leapt into my throat, ‘Oh fuck’. In the moment it was a bit shocking and I attempted to salvage the piece the best I could. For a moment It looked like I had saved the carving but then a few minutes later 2 other large chunks broke off and the artwork which I had spent the week carving was no more.

So what happens when I face a moment like this?

And this is what I want to talk about today.

Because how I respond to this situation and situations like this very much has an influence on the direction and path of my art, art business, and life.

This first thing that happened was I felt immediately weakened. A feeling of defeat, anger, rage, and frustration washed over me. I know I wanted to do the right thing to move forward but my reaction experience was compelling me in a different direction.

One of the first thoughts that came up was – ‘Im going home’

My initial reaction was so debilitating that I felt like I couldn’t continue working that day even though I had only been at the studio for about an hour when it happened with the whole day still ahead of me. I wanted to go home, to quite, to throw in the towel and just go home washed in defeat, anger and frustration.

Throughout my life I have identified a pattern within myself where I have a tendency to give up on moments of adversity. Granted, I always pick myself back up again eventually, however the point in this particular moment was to not give in to that initial trauma reaction.

I took a moment to just collect myself and stop myself from making a decision right then and there while  filled with this energy reaction, a decision like ‘just going home’ or even ‘throwing my carving onto the ground and smashing it in frustration and anger which is something I also wanted to do in that moment.

So basically, I am learning here how to handle moments like this in the most effective way possible.

To not react and act in emotion and energy reaction but to act with common sense and practical insight.

To be honest, a few weeks ago I actually did take out my frustrations on one of my carvings which was the first time this happened in all of the years I have been carving.

So now here in this moment when my carving crumbled in front of me, I had an opportunity for a Re-do! 

A few weeks earlier I let my frustrations get the best of me and so now I had an opportunity to correct this and this time around breathe, and not get caught up in the reaction and rather focus on doing what was actually best in that moment which was to just go a different direction with the carving and see if I could still at least make something out of it.

Later that evening while I was discussing the point with my Wife and we were talking about how I could create more stability with my carving/art business, so that for instance a piece breaking like this wouldn’t be such a big deal. Right now, part of the reaction is that the art I am making is connected to time and money and so when a piece breaks like that, those particular money and time relationships within me are being affected and activated. The point my Wife made was a good one. She pointed out that any stability that I am attempting to create must come from within me first, to which I agreed whole-heartedly.

So my reaction revealed how much of myself I had invested in the sculpture I was creating and as I am writing this I can see that there is also a dimension of impatience involved where I see I was charging ahead trying to achieve success as fast as possible and in doing this moving out of my grounded, calm, and stable presence of self – In this case being Self Centered would have been a good thing!

One benefit that came from the whole experience is that it was jarring! And it kind of gave me a bit of jolt to step back and reassess where I was and how I could perhaps refine my direction into a more supportive expression/application.

So I crumbled and broken sculpture and began looking at how I could salvage it, how I could pull something out of it, how I could go in a different direction. I eventually flipped up on end and saw a new direction that I could go with it and so I ended up carving a small abstract out of the ruins of the larger broken one – I titled the new piece “Renewal”

One of the main lessons out of all this is the re-enforcing of the principle of SELF FIRST and that I can continue developing and practicing creating an inner stability within me so that when/if something like this happens again, that I don’t get thrown off track and I can remain consistent, balanced and stable within myself and simply continue on my way, learning from such experiences and not letting it derail me.

Thank-you everyone for reading.

Andrew.

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