Early autumn of 2009
PREFACE
"Nothing is more degrading than the continuing concerns about the means of subsistence. People who despise money just inspire me disdain. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which we can not make full use of the other five. Without a decent income, half of the possibilities of life are lost to us. The only caution that one should take is to not pay more than a shilling by shilling who wins. Some say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They had never felt the edge on meat. Not imagine how poverty degrades. Exposes them to endless humiliations, cut it in the wings, corrodes our souls like a cancer. Wealth is not what you ask, but what is necessary to maintain the dignity, to work without hindrance, to be generous, frank and independent '
(Dialogue between two artists. The first, young, unsure of his talent. The second oldest and most prestigious, is who is speaking.)
Somerset Maugham in Of Human Bondage
Before you start talking about the work of an artist must know how much it costs at least one brush, paint a picture, a ream of paper to a poet or the price of a chisel or sanding of the sculptor.
It is at least false to assume that art is the product of a state of abnormal perception and rave all artists in their studios or studios, far from ordinary mortals.
The artistic process is one of the fields of human activity and, therefore, done by humans, like me and you who read me, people with psychological and physical problems like any ordinary person.
His art is an instrument of intervention in this world that surrounds him, and he is part and which aims to play.
Yes it's true what Nietzsche says: "Some people are born posthumously," but he did not say is that this is not voluntary.
For in all conscience, no man produces beauty to hide it, but to show her and see her surprised, because the other food the artist, in addition to bread, is the applause.
We all want to seduce, as Foucault notes, the artist aims to make it through his art.
If this does not happen, great will their suffering, given its enormous sensitivity, because all he can capture and that he expressed in his pictures, text, music or sculpture, will be known to very few which are not always the best audience.
This is not vanity, though those who take pride in their work would be recognized by it.
It's flow, because the artist has to give to someone who receives. He is just an amplifier through which echo the sounds of creation and of course the sound they produce has a goal: reaching the ears of many people.
When this reverberates in the silence of an empty cave or lost in the desert, the feeling of frustration is inevitable.
And while the beauty, to be produced often depends on the silence and solitude, she is nothing but a boon for society and the artist its bearer as a messenger of the Muses.
It mediates the encounter between the invisible and visible, between the world of beauty and the world of material forms, solid, in which the feet of the messenger are supported.
Your body is your most valuable tool because it is through him, his brain, his arms, his ears, he does intimate aesthetic alchemy of universal chords and transmuted into something visible and tangible, in short, becomes a personal perception of a sensation conference.
He lives in his body, it works inside your body, so needs the body to produce the beauty that makes or helps to unravel the eyes less elaborate.
Therefore, art is not and never was taken off the materiality of the human and therefore every fantasy about the importance of suffering and misery in the preparation of beauty is false and ridiculous, only serves the values of a religion in its purity sabotaged by interests the most wanton and politicians who preached for centuries that poverty was a path of salvation.
The only daughter of material misery is the indignity.
And people in unsuitable conditions and with great sensitivity, tend to go crazy.
In this equation there is no balance between its components.
The engine of artistic creation is the inspiration that some have and others do not, for karmic reasons, genetic, or both, and not poverty or wealth.
Artists need to eat, drink, sleep.
And if they will create better conditions appropriate for such materials.
This is what this text. The balance. The stone causing psychological and spiritual reflection, reflections leading to improvement of the sculpture, giving you smoother contours, smoother.
This balance also depends on artistic talent.
Not the product of a developed intellect, but a spirit sensitive or mature, as the old artist who talks to the young artist in the above text, taken from the Book of Somerset Maugham. God grant that we may all have the same maturity to give our lives a balanced among the things of heaven and earth, as represented in the star of Solomon.
Suzano, São Paulo. Brasil, April 7, 2009
Chapter 1
Atelier
It's autumn already, and the days become warmer in the southern hemisphere.
For those who appreciate the light and its variations, the skies of autumn have much to reveal nuances in color and clarity.
Maybe the Sun farther down in a colder light, more rational, and this will inspire thinking and calm.
Although the art requires passion, she also needs the stability which ensures the possibility of instability of aesthetic expression, like a volcano that guarantees the performance of its eruption by the shape of your mouth which channel the chaos of hot lava by its diameter.
Art is the reason expressed in the madness, as in line trying to trace the invisible, which seeks to give visibility to the intangible.
The stone, which will release any beauty, before beginning work and artistic work of stoning is only chaos and potential.
There, the eyes of the uninitiated, there is nothing but an amorphous condition, which is expected by the hand of the artisan, contours reveal quite unexpected.
For the artist, however, it is just to chop the excess, since in his mind the work already done.
His hands are the flames of the forge creative.
The fire of creation springs from the artist's hand and ignites the material in front, led by its sensibility, like the mouth of the dragon heads the jet where the Beast wishes.
This is strength, channeled wisely, in pursuit of beauty.
And for that wisdom may spring to make the necessary silence, the raw material of the artist.
The sound of injuring the chisel marble should not compete with any other sound, so every noise can translate and express the inner voice of the artist.
Silence.
This is the most abundant material in this white room, spacious with large windows and generous with the autumnal sunshine, the cold light of reason.
Few furniture arranged randomly in the environment.
A leather sofa white, three-seater in a corner, covered with a plaid blanket, thrown carelessly over it.
An armchair small but comfortable in front of the stone.
A sink with two or three glasses in another corner, with a small table in front of it with two chairs, covered with a red towel.
On the table bread, a piece of cheese already partially consumed, and a bottle of wine.
In the center, imposing a monolith of marble, paralelepepidal, but still in rough conditions, with approximately two meters tall, supported by a low plateau of wood.
The roof has no ceiling and the roof is apparent, with the rafters treated and varnished, with a few glass tiles allowing the light entering from above, and increasing the brightness of the environment.
The place has become a privileged view of nature around the house, located on a hillside facing the sea.
This is the environment in which the dragon cast its flames and processing on the piece of marble, still, still innocent of the fate that awaits him.
The monolith, resigned, awaiting the imminent transformation, which course to wear, and loss of substance.
It's rock. Hence one can not talk about pain. Still will be based on drastic changes and traumas.
At the end, the marks of these traumas, just them, the ancient stone that will look more elaborate aesthetic.
Without the blows of a hammer and chisel, a piece of art will not arise, the harmony will not grow.
Still, she waits for the artist is pleased.
Of the initial moves to the more abrupt finish, it takes time, time that is necessary for the transformation that occurs gradually, day after day.
Which brings us to the conclusion that beauty, to be achieved, need strength, determination and time. Everything just witnessed and just the silence of the studio, the temple of this transformation.
The artist, however, is quiet.
Sitting in the chair placed strategically in front of the marble, he just watches the stone, enjoying its image, savoring its stillness and the light that pours slant on it.
The rock thus exposed, naked, unblushing.
Do not you see the look of the artist nor the depth with which it penetrates.
Or rather, it reflects it. For the work and the creator are actually poles and mirror images of each other. We can not create a beauty that is not already in us.
The world is our reflection, more than this: in our world reflects and doubles.
A thought, a reality, another thought, another reality, complementary or antagonistic, synergistic or neutralizing the former.
If neutralizing, or get to know about our work, aborted thoughts antagonistic to each other.
Only when accumulated mental conditions synergistic with each other enough and long enough, we will have energy in adequate quantity and quality of the realization that it is dense.
A solid thing can only be in existence if it has sufficient stability.
Thus, we create what we are, what we really are as this is more than an impression, is a consolidated way of seeing the world, a peculiar perspective of the things we have, and does not change very easily.
Such transformations peculiar personal perception only happen in two ways: slowly, over time, consolidating new structures that have shown the consistency needed to express himself, and quickly, the trauma, which buries deep in our being a concept, with the blade emotion, tearing the skin of any resistance to rehearse before the events that parade before our eyes.
There are easy and calm fundamental changes.
Only a chisel and mallet in the psychological can chop properly because as marble, our psychic material is not flexible.
It was thus, making considerations on the changes that would in themselves and in marble which the artist stood, leaving the afternoon in, tour the workshop and within himself, consolidating them into shapes that would like to see that rock innocent, full of possibilities, but it will generate only one, get one that achieve the most attention of all images that parade through his head as the sun dies out there.
Contemplating so carefully, the object is to allow the object itself speak, say what you want from our hands.
So the artist waiting in his chair, the marble will tell you how to be transformed.
Stones speak very slowly.
So you need patience, a few days if necessary before the first blow before the first cut.
For when this is given, the work will already be ready mentally and physically, inside the mind of the artist, the craftsman.
Light dance at the studio walls in various ways, with multiple styles, a constant speed, with perfect sense of rhythm.
The Sculptor quietly in his chair contemplating this spectacle of silent music, harmonizing with this rhythm while harmonizing with the stone. Marble, the man who contemplates it, and the light that allows for contemplation, gradually become one.
When this happens, the work can begin.
The three points of a sacred triangle are populated.
Only then the manifestation will become possible.
The night arrives.
The artist, exhausted, will stand and wait for the light back so you can restart your workout.
The work for today is over.
Chapter 2
The Plan of Work
The day is reborn.
The coffee is sipped slowly and the morning papers are casually clad, as is common in hours as young as these.
A piece of papaya, savored slowly, then a yogurt, one cup of coffee with a piece of bread and white cheese. Now honey, that will sweeten the mind for reflection that will follow
For the sculptor, you must have a roadmap that helps at work.
Contemplation after desejum therefore resumes.
Suddenly, an epiphany, it all comes to mind with clarity and simplicity.
The process will be the obvious: begin with the head and neck and descend slowly: chest, arms, abdomen and legs.
Finally, the feet.
See in front of the image ready.
There are no doubts as to the dimensions and proportions.
The image is metaphorical: not only a human form, but a body that sculpts itself.
The man in the sculpture will be bent over the abdomen in an uncomfortable bending, in the style of Rodin.
Have in your hands a hammer and a chisel chipping away and be yourself.
A reflection on the self-construction in stone of human beings.
There will be the face of the statue a slight smile, as if the work would bring him satisfaction.
Your muscles are tense, but not too much.
Actually have an almost relaxed while you run your effort.
His hair will be big enough to fall over his forehead, while the head bends to work the legs.
Making considerations on this picture, in which the extremes of the body are virtually the sculptor reflects on the symbolism of this circle that closes that both recalls the Oroboros, the Greek term which means the serpent swallowing its tail.
The head finds its limit of flexion in their own feet, which viewed in a broader sense shows that man has the exact measure of how low it can get.
Less than that, it will not.
The body of the being is its own limit, sets its own limits, both in life and in the creation of Life.
His head, once built, it seems high in relation to their legs, but actually part of one integrated whole, as the serpent symbol circular.
Wisdom is made of truisms.
The trivial: these is that we can not forget, almost a philosophy of common and banal, replacing with gallantry the big questions of existence.
And the body and its limits, physical and psychological, is not in any way a trivial matter.
Against him, body, however, is its overt and yet ignored presence. The body, being always with us, is an eternal stranger.
How many know where your own liver, his spleen, bones, or even your arteries?
Where is my cerebellum?
And the muscles that give shape to my belly or my back?
These skills are not minor. Sound knowledge about what help is sound exercise of the imagination.
Thanks to their anatomical knowledge and their ability to observe, the sculptor can mentally consider in detail the work done.
He knows the man's body.
This is already a good start in the practice of visualization.
Knowing our body is our home meet this fleeting life
Not only our minds but our bodies have many secrets still to reveal to us, we who believe know him so bem.Intuímos this, although we are not yet sure how to demonstrate this, but we know in our bones that our bones and meat are not all they are.
We are more, yes, physically and mentally, but what are we?
We have glands that react to light, we depend on the secretions that night and circadian rhythms that were already in us before we can talk.
Why are we as we are?
No matter.
The mystery, thank God, is guaranteed and we are far from knowing everything we need on our bodies, much less on our minds.
The same head is the limit of flexion in the legs, have something inside her boundless potential of being established.
And this thing indefinitely, may eventually make the body apparently limited to something unlimited, so that what we know as their "limits" are transcended by the intervention of this enhancer element: the mind.
Hence the question: this body has limits and we received a set of mental and cultural controls in order to believe that they have limits?
We know that the flexibility of the body as the mind can be improved, respectively, by the practice of sport and intellectual education.
Then again ask: we have experienced limits or the limits we set for ourselves, or that someone has set for us and which we accept as real?
Personal beliefs: these are our limits.
These are the limits of our spirit and our body.
In extreme situations the man who demonstrates abilities in the absence of the need and challenge never manifest.
What we are, therefore, is unknown, since both the mind and body are plastic enough to surprise us with unsuspected performances provided they are requested by the extreme fear or very adverse conditions.
A lot of times greater plasticity than that marble statue which will be made and that, meanwhile, is in the mind of the artist, but which can symbolize their immobility, flag, like a road sign shows, still, the direction of flow of a road.
Statues are always metaphors marble or granite.
Having made these considerations, the day promises.
The work can now begin.
Chapter 3
The Head
A head is divided into two distinct artistic and different levels of difficulty: the skull and face.
The skull shape is infinitely less complex ways to give the expressive mask.
Not that the skull is a minor work or requiring less skill, but the skull has to store and protect their content against the action of external agents, ie, it must be solid and stable, stony if you allow me the pun.
Now face the task of serving as an instrument of social interrelationships, must have flexibility and mutability, and so his wealth muscle is exuberant.
Driving away the stone this capability of expressions is perhaps the miracle of sculpture.
Arms, legs and abdomens are docile in the hand of the artist as the face will ever be.
You must decide which of the thousands of possible expressions more will fit to the body of the statue, that is what it is: to capture a moment of man's expression in a continuous motion in infinite number of combinations and freeze it in stone .
Around ten muscles are the skull while thirty are on the face.
In that scene, what kind of mask, the artist should stop?
The mask of comedy, tragedy, sarcasm, pain, contempt, pride, humility, physical or spiritual ecstasy?
Finally, the artist chooses the mask of attention, interest, care.
This being represented manifest the importance of concentration in a labor of love, why build up is to grow, not wither; better, not worse, something that should bring satisfaction and commitment and it should be, in a word, rewarding.
The life should be full of accomplishment and makes no sense to tear you to shreds with petty questions as is customary among humans.
Moreover, the creator stunned with our complaints and moans as if our daily problems were the most important, or rather as if they were fundamental to the progress of the universe, but are not.
Our life is perfectly ordinary and uneventful although we live the fantasy of originality, uniqueness, and be fooled by the illusion of others who think also live a unique experience.
Any fool says, grandiloquent: "My life would make a book!", Falls into a silence followed by a theatrical or dramatic look to discern a distant horizon, leaving the other party the opportunity to fill that gap with your imagination.
In fact the human drama as a whole, is redundant, circular, repetitive.
This monotony, this circularity, however, does not cause boredom, it implies death, or at least absence of life.
All the variations that we know all manifestations are said original and unique on a platform of stability. In this steady pace mattress, flat frequency, life jumps and spins, and makes the fall and spring, to return again by gravity to this soft soil that sustains like a trampoline.
We can perform many moves during the time of our tiny jump (one incarnation or another day of life) varying the positions and expressions of our face, but profits most who realizes that a return to this mattress is inevitable and uses this knowledge to them, taking advantage of this return to prepare for a push bigger and better, allowing more time, say, the air in apparent freedom of action.
The inevitability of this momentum is returning to perhaps the most difficult
teaching for this civilization atheist and rationalist, who believes absolutely free to decide their fate, regardless of the vicissitudes of life, culture, genetics, anthropological tradition and finally, the beliefs and convictions that all this gives us.
Maybe, if it sensed the inevitability of such cyclical returns, common sense before trying to understand it, the curse.
Only if the pulsar is the nature of existence: the heart beats, cycle the lungs until the mood swings, over a single day.
Days and nights are alternated in the statement of the obvious: life is at a steady pace, alternating.
This is the formula that explains the unity in diversity in disguise.
Beliefs. The head is full of beliefs, preconceptions, pre-occupations.
And like a movie projector projects the eyes of the head and imagine we see a world consistent with our convictions.
We must quiet the mind so that the eyes can see nothing around us, the blinding white screen in which reality is transformed to one who has mastered his own head.
Because anything that is not already in us, will appear out of us though nobody likes to think so.
After all, this means that even design our own dramas, our own bitterness and they do not accidentally fall into her lap.
Nobody wants that responsibility.
Every head likes to give to others, either humans or gods to blame for what happens to us.
For the head does not see what the hands of that body to which it belongs, do.
The head has its own life, sometimes too own, disconnected from the body which should be part of.
In most cases, is the body that seems to be part of the head and not the reverse.
So perhaps, the sculpture has gotten around, at the top, where they come from the orders, determinations neurological and philosophical, from where the beliefs, to create worlds, to demarcate boundaries in a reality more than the plastic skull.
Such as the plastic face which relates to him and that helps in its creation.
After a smile or a face of resentment they generate strong reactions and may designate the quality of a full day of our existence.
The skulls are material, but the faces are spiritual.
Faces fluctuate with the wind, like flags, and it should be, so they can fulfill their role.
They say the eyes are the organs most expressive, but the face is a context in which they, eyes are inserted, together with other elements, lips, facial muscles, cilia, as dancers who dance a ballet to convey a complex message or an idea.
And an eyebrow can also be neglected if well used, with due respect, your day's eye.
Nothing on the face, can or should be ignored in understanding an individual or a reaction.
The more honest a person, most plastics will be your face, let alone for a stony face, further away from this guy is his humanity.
Know if a master on his face, because their character is saying a lot with few muscles.
There are men and women who strive for more than their thirties and manipulate muscles, express little.
But the teacher will say a lot with a simple smile.
It will be a serene smile, but expressive.
Serenity is not insensitivity, or meaninglessness, or absence of plasticity.
Serenity is smooth, but still moving.
It's like comparing an elephant to race with the flight of a gull.
The flight of a bird depends on the position of small corrections that generate incredible changes of direction.
So is the face of a master: few moves, a lot of meaning.
So the face is a work of art apart and Sculptor must ensure that the correct expression is there, indicating a specific feeling, a mood or attitude of the phenomena around that be.
It is the face of the man who acknowledge their beliefs, the same beliefs that are in your skull on his head. To the trained eye, nothing more is needed to meet someone.
Chapter 4
Arms
Arms are extensions. Expand our field of action.
Are synonymous with action. Has no autonomy, however, that the brain has. Do not decide what to do, just following mental determinations.
Arms are slaves of the will of the head. They are obedient, silent.
The artist, looking for arms while the sculpts, he thinks in its metaphorical possibilities.
Strength: arms express the force required for shaping the world.
Intervention: arms race with the language and the word's ability to engage in real, however, arms do not talk, act.
Herein, perhaps the mind has something to learn from his servants the arms.
Seizure: arms and their extensions, hands, know how to grab what they want, firmly, with determination.
Not all beings dominate the lesson of the arms, hands. Few beings are capable of intervening in their own lives and transform them, quietly and determinedly, grabbing opportunities firmly so it does not exhaust them by the fingers.
Lives can not be ignored, all are precious. All must be caught, embraced and worked with enthusiasm of a starving baker, preparing the bread dough.
All human beings must be worthy of her arms and, like them, be obedient to their heads, instead of resisting the instructions that come from the depths of his being.
In a nutshell: inner harmony is a road without gaps between desire and action.
Arms are arms that patients think. Arms can not and should not think, just obey. Every part of our body function. If there is confusion about the role of each party, there is the disease of inaction.
Or rather, the sin of not - act.
For, ultimately, the only sin is the default.
Arms are brave. Venture. The fingers burn, ache, but feel, touch the world.
Do not try to idealize it: palpate it, perceive it directly and sensual.
Arms are objective, positivist, empirical, naturally have skills that the mind takes decades to achieve.
Along with the hands, arms are the scientists of the body.
Perhaps, finally, the greatest significance of the arms is his allusion to the duality of the world and its inherent complementarity.
For the arms usually come in pairs: left and right, and one side of the body.
Opposed laterally and need in the synergistic role they play in transforming the world and things.
Here, in the arms, it is evident that opposing sides are needed, as the so-called Good and Evil, work together for the harmonious transformation of the world.
Nothing like a pair of arms to make this concept clear. We need both to improve things around us, hugging a friend, a lover, a father.
Only by combining good and evil, right and left, we can express love to hug.
And Love is not idea, is an act, indeed, that is palpable and feels the modification of the real.
Arms and transformers are lovers, by definition.
You could say that every transformation is an act of love, even those which are not characterized by the mildness or the delicacy.
Left and right, one side and the other, both parts of the same body, necessary and indispensable to one another.
And the work timely, localized, these arms, opposite and complementary, have the beauty and originality of human affairs, because "man is a word of life, once told, can no longer be repeated," and like him, also works.
This sculpture is unique and these arms irreprodutíveis, but should still have the dynamic property of the symbol, even being stone, moves the thought of who contemplates generating reflection, changing understandings.
If the general assembly, the life cycle is redundant, in particular it is always unique, original.
Think about the kaleidoscope: the same pieces of colored glass, the same set of mirrors in the cylinder and an infinite number of combinations and images.
Chapter 4
The Trunk
Part 1
The Thorax
When considering the human torso, in form and content is inevitable to think in the heart, seen as the center of life,
For the sculptor, however, has major organs that store the universal breath.
While slowly lacerates the stone, thinking: "- Here in this grid protected by bone, in all living beings lies the vital breath."
It is known that every artist must have inspiration. This image is not free.
To inspire is to breathe in, get something invisible is what gives us the chance to express wisdom, strength and beauty in the world around us.
No detectable uptake of this element, say the physiologists, life would not be possible. Plus: art would be unviable.
It is not our heart that captures messages from the universe around us, but our nostrils.
We are immersed, everyone in this sea of energy spread through the air from which we extract small quantities, sixteen to twenty times per minute, thus ensuring our participation in the human adventure.
The life force comes to the thorax and after being received is immediately distributed throughout the body, including brain, where it will be the basis of imagination and reasoning.
Respiro: hence, I can dream, imagine things away from me, things I know because of what went through my nostrils, not through my eyes.
As much as the eyes see, ever see as much as what the air brings us as teaching silent.
We share, we all, human and nonhuman, a banquet atmosphere, which makes us complicit in any number of images, ideas, assumptions.
This is one of the ways that the reasoning of the artist takes as it shapes the curves and the slope of the chest of the statue in front, slightly bent over her abdomen.
Pulse. The chest throbbing with life, the movement of the cyclical flow of air and blood.
Expansion and contraction are alternated in this peculiar part of the body with obvious repercussions on the entire system.
Here life is also expressed in its dual nature. The duality of the arms is between assets and liabilities side, the chest is between full and empty. The chest reproduces the cosmogony.
"Made in His image and likeness," it said.
The entire cosmos also breathes. At the moment, and yet for many ages, God breathes, breathing galaxies and stars, satellites and civilizations everywhere. The whole universe is expanding and the galaxies are fleeing in all directions from the original point of the Big Bang.
Is puraka Hindu.
The artist stops for awhile and sit in front of work, leaving this sea of ideas that broke out in the depths of his spirit.
The form. The artist searches for the form, not content. His thinking, however, goes independent on the anatomy of the stretch that works and fall by considering analogies with the bodies as symbolic as the thorax with biblical protect his ribs.
Now, while taking a break, it focuses on the heart.
Common place for lyrical, critical for the doctors, the cardiac pump mechanics and continuously repeats the same motion over a lifetime, like the metronome of a piano.
Rhythm: the heart, to be healthy, need to have rhythm. Not only the force of contraction and expansion capability, but do all these things with rhythm, as the monotonous beat of a drum.
As the drums of Miriam in Exodus, the heart beats faster the excitement of being enjoyed, whether of happiness or sadness. And the blood, like a red ocean, flows through the arteries to the flavor of their pulsations. Life as we know it depends ultimately an invisible breath and a red sea, which come from the man's chest.
The Thorax, finds the artist, is a synthesis of the holy book. In it closes, not just a few verses, but the entire Torah.
Not only human life depends on this area of your body, but the woman got there its mythical origin.
Everything comes from the center, so. Not from above the head, so prestigious in our epoch, but the chest, the center of Leonardo's Vitruvian proportions, there where God has placed his breath quickening.
The center is a donor. It provides that receives a generous and immediate.
He is passing, not holding anything for himself, but making your precious possessions, air and blood, free movement for all body parts.
The center is generous. And so it should be.
The breathing and circulation should be open and unobstructed in order to guarantee the health of organs, the well-being.
"On his image and likeness" says the sacred text.
So, we all enjoy the Universal Breath, we benefited from being a generous and bountiful center, somewhere in the Cosmos, who thus spreading throughout the ether miraculous creation that maintains the existence of so many people in all corners in thousands of worlds.
Our lives, we who are the cells of the universe must come from the chest of God as in us comes from our own.
Part 2
The Abdomen
Place of rectus muscles, the abdomen process food, warm and rhythmic movements.
Yes, the abdomen is alchemical: transforms what comes to him in simple essences, which can be absorbed by the body.
It is not just a furnace, but a huge laboratory, taking turns with various substances in the preparation of biological compounds varied.
This we know.
For Sculptor, however, it is something of a surface curve toward the base of the body. There, the artist thinks, we find the earthiness, purer than that of a body can be: himself.
No matter is not an element of sin, it is the basis for beauty, for the spirit in this plane is not visible except through the body.
The Almighty gave us the world as a blessing and an opportunity for achievement and improvement.
The world is our marble, our clay. We are the sculptors.
When our artistic ability to reach the peak, then we are craftsmen respected, and we can reproduce the beauty of a red rose with competence and in quantities sufficient to give some relief and satisfaction to everyone who has to carry his cross.
The abdomen reminds us of the importance of solid, without loss of spirit.
No news for a sculptor used to boot the grace and aesthetic of rough stones, amorphous, a processor of marble, as the abdomen becomes food.
All of us, sculptors or not, we must learn the lesson of the rough stone and marble, which gives us discipline, test our resolve and patience, enhance our sensitivity and creativity.
The abdomen is the master of this lesson: matter is sacred, it derive our livelihood, and should be revered as our guideline in the path of artistic development.
We love the food we eat because it gives us life.
Let us love our stones, because these will make our statues, our art, will the sculptor.
CHAPTER 5
Legs
Support columns, the legs are two such arms.
For the trunk is balanced, requires that both sides are covered: the left and right, Jachin and Boaz
Legs are support, support, but also push up into the air, symbolizing to achieve the high, the sky, we must rely on the land.
There is no head, arms or lungs that may manifest itself properly without the support of strong legs and sound.
Legs touch the ground. The legs are humble. They ask nothing for themselves.
They just want to sustain.
They do what they were made to do. Serve. Legs are discrete.
Serve in silence. Why not talk legs. Only serve.
Our mind needs the lesson of the legs. Heads do not serve in silence.
Talking heads, and distract themselves with their own voice. The heads look at things in front of you, around you. They do not realize, however, his own legs, let alone the teachings they contain.
For figuring out the legs it takes humility, we must defer.
The head does not bend easily, but should. For the circle must be closed so that a stage has been shut down.
Why two legs?
Why is the universe that sustains us is dual. He does not exist if its two sides, two aspects, are not covered.
In the mythology of Moses in the Torah, the Cherubim in the Port of Eden free from the rest state two principles, passive, Eve, and the active, Adam.
We need what we call evil as far as what we call Well, since there is barely larger than the well all the time.
So begins the journey of mankind. Not only the right or the left side only, but both working together on their creative role.
The Sculptor gives special attention to the latter part of his work.
It symbolizes the completion of a journey, from top down, almost like a rediscovery of the importance of what is material in the generation of beauty and grandeur of man.
Every human being who does not learn the lesson of the legs, not realizing the importance of step with the decision to ground his feet, can never reach the higher levels produced in the Royal Art.
Revere the ground beneath our feet as much as the legs that allow us to step on it.
Only the artist can recognize how sacred can be all that is profane in us the ground we walk on and which sustains us in our evolution.
And are the legs that put us in contact with this sound, with this support base, with this set of values that underlie our behavior, to which we are trapped by the gravity of our educational training.
We need the base as legs and feet of those who rely on it.
The sculptor is panting. There is fatigue: excitation is creative.
His mind, like an antenna, wanders in search of ideas and images and one of them comes only from within himself, in his memory.
An excerpt from the Book of Daniel, chapter 2, verse 12 onwards:
"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This statue, a huge and excellent brightness, stood before thee, and his appearance was terrible.
The head of this statue was of fine gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
Sawest that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay, and broke in pieces.
Then was the iron, clay, bronze, silver and gold, which were like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away, and you could not find any trace of them, the stone, however, that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. "
Unlike the dream, this statue has strong legs.
We all need feet enough that we can continue this journey.
No feet divided, as Daniel explained to Nebuchadnezzar as iron and clay do not mix, but unos feet, fair.
He walks a trail should be careful.
That your feet can withstand any terrain without the need to be halted march.
One of the legs, the left will not be completed.
Remain in a cubic block, to give the idea of a work in progress, unfinished, like every human being should be.
The statue does not end the self-construction is permanent.
And the body kneeling on the right leg, working the left, will serve as well as almost sacred symbol of devotion to the work of self-construction.
Thus ends the Work.
The Sculptor throws you a white sheet and covers in full.
Call friends and his dealer for evaluation of the work.
And while the wine passes through their throats, before releasing the unpronounceable words, will comment on the aesthetics of the work.
For the sculptor, everything will be boring.
His pleasure decreases as the work ends and your life will be enriched only when a new project is underway.
Creating is part of it, Artist, and nothing, neither praise nor the adulation can make you overcome boredom in front of the home of two sculptures.
The sun will rise tomorrow, magnificent, this autumn cold, and he will bring new light on the studio, new ideas to the artist, to his delight and satisfaction.
It remains only to sleep and wait for the new morning.
The evening will already high.
The friends are gone.
The artist will rest.
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