Sculpt

Sculpt

What I love about sculpting–aside, obviously, from making sculpture–aside also from the incredible variety of things that you can sculpt, which ranges from a bar of soap, to wood, to stone, to metal I suppose, although the kind of handwork I’m talking about, which is generally work where you are holding a chisel, can’t be done on metal. What I love about sculpting is how it makes me feel, and the way that you think when you are sculpting, because it is a process of removal. The joy of many restorative practices that involve the hands is in thinking with your hands. They do that, you know. They have reservoirs of intelligence generally barely tapped by modern people. Fishermen listen with their fingers, and they can hear the whispers in a fishing line a hundred feet beneath. San trackers listen with their hands–they point, gesture, call–and receive information. Sculpting refines the listening of the hands, and like most practices that require the usage of the hands they cause to develop more refinement in your touch sensibilities. Since proprioception is, as we know, such a direct route to regulation, the use of the hands in a restorative practice, especially for those who spend lots of time running energy through cognition, is critical.

Part of the joy of sculpting, for me, is not only in working with the hands, but in reversing the way that we often relate to space and volume. Often we make things by adding to them, putting them together, joining them. In sculpting we make things by removing. We unlock the sculpture from the wood or the stone, and this work of attending to what must be removed is significant, and for many of us a useful departure. Because stone particularly is unyeilding, you also learn to apply shaping force with steadiness. Scultping combines several types of tools that require you to pay attention. Something rigid, something sharp, and bare skin. For those with attentional challenges who need a certain level of risk to keep them present, sculpting stone can provide that. And then there is the satisfaction of working with the materials- living/ non-living natural materials, and translating your inner or artistic vision into an object.