symposiums

[John VanCamp <jvcstnwrks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

* Follow-up to message from: jesse salisbury
* Original date (y/m/d) was: 17 Jan 2003
* Original subject was: symposiums

Although I have never been a symposium participant, I'd like
to relate my symposium experience to the group.  In 1976, a
sculptor living in the town I'd just recently moved to
organized an international sculptors symposium, and invited
24 sculptors from around the world to participate.  Local
quarries donated blocks of stone - limestone and granite-
and the participants lived in homes through out the
community for six weeks or so, and each created a piece of
sculpture.

As a flegling stone mason at the time, I spent as many hours
as possible watching the progress, and had my eyes opened
for the first time to another way of working stone.  In
1980, several other sculptors were invited to add pieces to
the collection, and by this time I was more than interested,
but having no "artistic" training, felt that carving of this
nature was beyond any thing I could manage.

One of these sculptors gave me the permission I needed to
break out of my stone wall prison when he told me to just
carve a piece.  If I liked it, then it was art.  If I didn't
like it, then toss it away and carve something else. That
very first piece is in a private collection in LA, and I've
been carving ever since, and making a decent living from it
for the last ten years or so.

I guess my point is, that had the symposium never happened,
I would have not had the opportunity to step off on to
another life path, and I am sure that other casual observers
at symposiums throughout the world have had similar
experiences.  So to those of you concidering organizing such
an event, go for it.  You will enrich your community by
their very envolvement, and just possibly change a few young
lives in the process.