The keynote speaker at the February, 2004 South Coast Writers Conference (which I have coordinated since its inception) was Kate Wilhelm. I lost my voice to laryngitis on Thursday. By the beginning of the Saturday afternoon sessions everything was under control and I slipped into the back of library just in time to hear Wilhelm ask everyone to close their eyes. She began describing the entrance to the school just outside the library and then said "The door opened......" and stopped. After a few minutes we opened our eyes and she asked "who walked through the door?" She went on to say there were two types of writers: those for whom someone had walked through the door; and those who were still deciding if a person was coming through the door, after all it could have been blown open by the wind. I perked up my ears, as much as they could be perked up in my sick haze, because no one had walked through my door.
Wilhelm said the conundrum of the first group, the visual writers, would be that they would be able to get to work quickly but would end up with too few words and would always be in search of more to flesh out their stories. For the second group (the intuitive writers) - they would have trouble getting started but would end up with too many words and have to learn to cull. There was a noticeable sigh of relief from a small number of people in the room. I am sure it was from the intuitive writers. Because it is the intuitive writers, and sculptors, who have such angst over where to start, who wonder if a person is ever going to come through that door.
I was awake before dawn the next day with an urgent need to begin preparing for my first sculpture show in 12 years. It was scheduled for October, 2004, and I had been struggling with where and how to begin again for months. I was too sick for the physical work of sculpting, so I sat down at my computer to busy myself with retyping some of my old piece statements. But the words kept coming, and coming, and coming - a lifetime of words flowing through my fingers. I began scouring my workroom for the words scribbled on scratch paper that accumulate when I sculpt. I reread my graduate thesis. I sifted through slides for a record of the false starts and forgotten versions. Finally, I began to put the words and the pictures together, rearranging them, writing more words, finding words for pieces I had long avoided, uncovering words from which pieces had yet to grow. Slowly, the words began to stitch the images together and as the gaps and loose ends became glaringly apparent, I knew where to begin again. Unfinished pieces were resolved, new pieces evolved, and the parables of my life coalesced - in sculpture and words.
Mulling over a concept visually and verbally had always helped move me past the blind spots, detours and dead ends. But I used to view the words as a by-product and rarely tried to hone the words, complete them with the same care and clarity as my sculpture. Now, I finally understand that I sculpt and write, write and sculpt. The words are an integral part of what I do, not a by-product. I am not just creating a snap shot of a moment in time, I am trying to capture the lessons learned. I need the words to dissect my life and thoughts down to the core, where my sculptures wait to see the light of day. My work is about form and negative space, but it is also about color and about words, and about life. For the first time in my life I have a string of titles, of problems, of lessons, stretching to the horizon. I know what I do, I know how I do it, and I look forward to the dialog, the lessons, each piece will bring. And, as Wilhelm predicted, I am finally having to learn to cull.
