cultural relevance?

[Don Dougan <dondougan@zzzzzzzz>]

Norman;

I have been interested in reading much of what your question has inspired
folks to respond with.  I have not responded until now because I frankly
thought, what can I add?  Cultural relevance?  But perhaps it was your
statement of distress that focused my own thoughts, so here now is my own
two cents worth:

I make things to express my own perceptions of truth (and truth's alter
ego, beauty).  And no, I don't mean pretty polished things, but the
entire spectrum of what beauty can be.  My art is not capitalized, my art
is in the details.

Stone stands out among materials because it is primal -- everywhere
humanity might travel to (in the solar system, the galaxy, etc.) will
probably have stone as its bedrock.  Perhaps that is why I am drawn to it
-- the direct interaction between myself and the basic stuff of the
universe reinforces my own sense the wholeness of . . . what matter is --
or what matters.

When I get the shivers up and down my spine it is usually because I
perceive truth beautifully stated in another's beings'  work .  And if
that work is in stone, my own natural affinity for this primal substance
makes the statement all the 'truer.'

Picasso once said that  "art is a lie that makes us understand truth."

I certainly cannot put into words what I know any better (or more
succinctly)  than that, but I might add that stone is to me one of the
most truthful of materials, and perhaps that is why I am continually
drawn back to working with it.
Why, even though I work in many sculptural mediums, the other materials
all are juxtaposed and contrasted with my (touch)stones.  I cannot help
but feel that stone affects some deep affinity within all of us as human
beings, and this is where (y)our 'cultural relevance' comes into the
response.

Sorry for what might seem to be bad puns or trite phrasings, but I find
written language in many ways less poetic than stone.

Good Carving to you;
Don
http://www.dondougan.com