Close to the stone +

["Clive Murray-White" <cow_artclive@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi again,

Lurking somewhere deep in our apparent enthusiasm for the "Close to
the stone" topic are two other intriguing issues.

It was Maureen's most eloquent defence and description of her craft
that really set us going. Along side her "close to the stone thread"
was the equally important realisation that there was something
intangibly significant in maintaining cultural continuity.

I would probably go as far as to say that it is my personal hunch that
many people from predominantly Western cultural traditions have been
sensing that they have lost touch with their cultural roots.

The reason for this is fairly obvious ... for much of the last century
and most particularly during the 60's & 70's we rather over
enthusiastically purposely set out to denounce our accrued cultural
traditions believing that we were so special that  we deserved to
create from the ground up a brand new culture. As we look back we can
not but notice that that was not only impossible but ridiculously
arrogant.

The main cause of our realisation that we had created our own sense of
cultural loss was our observation that we were becoming increasing
interested in any peoples that had maintained a very strong sense of
cultural continuity in their arts and crafts.

In typical western fashion we expressed our sense of cultural loss by
becoming increasingly interested in almost culture other than our own.
Needless to say this, if we look at it objectively was not only a very
stupid course of action because it is not in us to be something that
we are not but cultural appropriation on the kind of scale that has
occurred is most definitely ethically inappropriate.

Maureen's letter carving goes way past getting "close to the stone"
for one very good reason. The hand carved inscription is an integral
part of the Western cultural tradition  and because of that each of
her inscriptions probably have the power to transport her viewers
through time back into our/my/her core culture.

Just as the hand carved inscription is an integral part of Western
culture so is it that it is a fact that that tradition is completely
rooted in stone.

We may even find that our ever increasing interest in using stone is
itself an attempt to regain links with our lost cultural roots.

 From my own perspective drawing out the character of the stone is just
the bottom line I am much more interested in going for what Albert
Camus describes much eloquently that I could manage.

"The greatest and most ambitious of all the arts, sculpture, attempts
to fix in its three dimensions the fleeting figures of man and to
reunite the disorder of his movements in the unity of a great style.
Sculpture pays not a little attention to resemblances (in fact it
requires them), but it does not seek them above all else. What it has
sought in the great epochs is the gesture, the expression, or the
empty glance in the world. Its intention is not one of imitation, but
of stylisation, to catch in one significant expression all the passing
furore of the body and its infinite variations of attitude. Only then
does it erect on the pediment above the tumultuous city the model, the
type, the perfect, immobile symbol which, cools the incessant fervour
of man. The lover, robbed of love, can finally circle around the Greek
korai and gain for himself that which, in the body and visage of man,
survives every degradation" - Paris 1951.

Regards to you all Clive