Sculptor
Safer never formally studied art. His first forays into sculpture were experiments with plastic swizzle sticks. In 1957 he made his first creations, and he continued to experiment, eventually beginning to carve Lucite. In 1969 Safer had his first show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the Michael Berger Gallery. Several shows in private galleries followed with a major exhibition at the Pyramid Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In 1971 the renowned art collector and U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Annenberg, invited Safer to have an exhibition at the American Embassy in London.
In 1972 President Gerald Ford presented Safer's Limits of Infinity to King Juan Carlos of Spain as a gift of state. This in turn led to several major events in Safer's sculptural career. As a result of a news report of President Ford's gift, the Dean of Harvard Law School sought to acquire a Safer sculpture for the school. This culminated in 1979 with the installation of Judgment, a monumental bronze work which was presented to Harvard Law School as a gift of Safer's class of 1949. This was Safer's first monumental public work.
John McArthur, the Dean of Harvard Business School visited the palace at Zarzuela where King Juan Carlos had installed Limits of Infinity. Moved by the sculpture, Dean McArthur returned to America and commissioned Safer's 20-foot-high (6.1 m) Search for Harvard Business School. The patinated bronze was installed on the Business School grounds in 1984 adjacent to the spot where Safer's daughter, Janine, received her MBA five days later.
In 1985 Safer was invited to exhibit sculpture in the Pioneers of Flight Hall at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C. He has the distinction of being the only artist to have ever had an exhibition in the central gallery of the most visited museum in the world.
In 1989 the U.S. Department of State again sent Safer sculptures to Europe. As of 2008, the Department has exhibited Safer sculpture in London, Paris, Beijing, Dublin, Bern, Lisbon, Brussels, Bucharest, Belgrade, Nassau, Washington, and New Deli. Both public and private exhibitions of Safer sculpture can be seen in venues throughout the world.
Safer continues to create sculpture. He works with his stepdaughter Kathryn Scott, to whom he taught his trade and offered his mantle. In 2007, they began work on a monumental sculpture, Quest, for the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute. The 35-foot-high (11 m) stainless steel fabricated sculpture and state of the art research center, the Robert H. and Clarice Smith Building, was dedicated two years later, on October 16, 2009, 80 years to the day after the pioneering institute’s first building made its debut. Safer, a patient, donated the multi-ton sculpture as a gift of appreciation. It is one of the largest gifts of art that Johns Hopkins has received. In December 2011, Scott and Safer began work on a model for a monumental sculpture for the Marine Aviation Memorial.
Safer explains the motivation behind his sculpture:
- "At its best, sculpture can give a glimpse of the relationship between that which lies within us and that which does not. I strive to make works that will elevate the human spirit. What I see and try to capture is the movement of beauty. I try to freeze a line of motion that expresses strength, power, or grace. I try to grasp and make permanent something that is
ephemeral."
- "What I aspire to, as an artist, is contained in the philosophy of the Golden Age of Greece: Truth is beauty; nothing in excess; know thyself. The essential thought behind the creation of my Sculpture is humanity. My goal is to increase the awareness of the beauty of life for myself and for others."
"I read once that Mozart could conceptualize a whole symphony in an instantaneous flash. Then he would have the laborious task of committing it to paper. This struck a chord, Mozartian I hope, in me. That's the way I create most of my sculpture. I get a kind of instantaneous flash, a look, a total concept, and then I have to give it substance, make it occupy space."
Safer credits his wife, Joy, with giving him "a new perspective on the world … which lifted my sculpture to a level I had not previously attained."
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Famous quotes containing the word sculptor:
“The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury; for the sculptor it is a necessity.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)
“The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)