Bradford Graves - Personal Philosophy About Sculpture

Personal Philosophy About Sculpture

“The making of sculpture may be taken as a desire for wholeness: The recognition of one’s identity as part of the earth and its materials. In the confrontation of one’s inner image with physical materials, a dialogue begins and the result is a sculptural statement. Through this dialogue an attempt is made to clarify subject and object matter. The subject matter is the discovery, and not how much I know as I fabricate the sculpture. The object matter is the myriad of personal preconceptions that we transfer on to materials. People, cultures, other objects, past events - All become the excess baggage of symbols carried around with us. become the basis of abstract object art. Out of this confrontation, what we look for is the art of “The real.” The real is the dialogue between fabricator and his materials, not a dialogue with oneself. One wants to touch, walk the earth, and create a place for events. The material I have chosen to have a working dialogue with is stone. Stone, one of the oldest sculptural materials, not to be confused with its architectural use, has been limited by its outer boundaries, the monolithic block. I have attempted to overcome this by utilizing work methods derived from constructivism, the pitting together of separate blocks allowing space to become an active part of the sculpture. This is a unifying method of working that allows each unit of my sculptures to create its own reasons for existence. The process is analogous to crystallization. First there is the idea, the basis of an internal ordering of structure, expanded or split into different units. From this, the resulting segmentation of a conceptual idea through physical units hints at the crystallization. They become like stars in the night sky, each defined by its own space, but perceived together they make up the fabric of a universe.” —Bradford Graves.