cultural relevance?

["Bill Urmenyi" <bill@zzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Norman
I sorry to hear of your great distress.

First of all you are looking for art to say something. Well it doesn't, it
asks,  it begs questions.

You appear to have found at least one work with this mysterious 'other'. You
should not be embarrassed about being moved to tears, it shows that you are
a man.

OK cultural differences and their influence on art and in particular stone
art. Well stone art may not be as old as the hills but it is as old as
modern man and that's old. Further more it does translate into the
contemporary scene, though only in a minority of artists work. Well whenever
I get one of those forms to fill in where they ask for my ethnic origins I'm
tempted to write rift valley Kenya. There are differences between cultures
and there are certainly differences between individuals. Every artist brings
his/her (I can't be doing with this PC stuff) own particular experience and
knowledge to their work. There simply is no other way. This includes their
family and history together with all the other art works that they have ever
seen or had described. So the artist brings with him all these cultural
influences and the stone sculptor also brings the history of the stone and
that as I have said is a lot older than history itself as it goes back some
50000 years and more. Now the viewer of the work looks at it with their
particular history and their understanding of stone as a material. This
would appear to be your main interest.

You wonder whether the viewer in 2000 years time will be able to appreciate
what was made today. Well it does seem as though most of what is there today
will be observable then. We look at ancient works today and appreciate them
for what they appear to be to us today. If we miss some subtle meaning, with
which they were imbued, that is only a minor problem for us. I see no reason
why people in 2000 years would not do much better considering the wealth of
information that is stored on our present day way of thinking. As I have
said, each artist brings their own particular history to their work and that
is today something which belongs to them and generally is not available to
the viewer. The same will apply in 2000 years except that it will be more
remote.

Does this get a bit closer to an answer for you?

Bill Urmenyi