IMAGES COMING SOON
ARTIST STATEMENT
Not all storytellers use words; sculpture can also tell a story, transporting the observer to another time and place. The subjects that inspire my choice for each sculpture, both two and four legged, have exhibited a life full of grit. They are snapshots, excavated from those lives, revealing a story of perseverance. My focus is on historical figures and animals from the American frontier; I am intrigued with the time period from the early 18th century to the late 19th century.
For the past forty years I have relied heavily on comparative anatomy. It was the foundation that guided my work while creating mounted fossil skeletons and fleshed out models for museums. It was essential to know how to articulate each joint, of each skeleton; the position of every element contributed to a story being offered for the observer to define.
Today, that education continues to be central for my current work. I start with a metal armature, mirroring the shape and size of each bone; each joint is articulated to create a skeleton, a map in a sense, for the rest of the work to be resolved. The attitude of the skeleton, the position of every element is selected to help create a sense of movement and story.
Once the armature is in place, the deep muscles are laid in and shaped, with the superficial anatomy following. Each part of the process contributes to help tell the story I am weaving into the piece. I articulate the story through armature, wax, light, and shadows; emulating the method of how a writer chooses words and sentence structures to create their story.
I believe for those who search out stories and for those who seek to tell them are, in the words of P. T. Nile, '...like beggars and beggars like to show other beggars where we discover the bread'.
M. B. Smith
ARTIST STATEMENT
Not all storytellers use words; sculpture can also tell a story, transporting the observer to another time and place. The subjects that inspire my choice for each sculpture, both two and four legged, have exhibited a life full of grit. They are snapshots, excavated from those lives, revealing a story of perseverance. My focus is on historical figures and animals from the American frontier; I am intrigued with the time period from the early 18th century to the late 19th century.
For the past forty years I have relied heavily on comparative anatomy. It was the foundation that guided my work while creating mounted fossil skeletons and fleshed out models for museums. It was essential to know how to articulate each joint, of each skeleton; the position of every element contributed to a story being offered for the observer to define.
Today, that education continues to be central for my current work. I start with a metal armature, mirroring the shape and size of each bone; each joint is articulated to create a skeleton, a map in a sense, for the rest of the work to be resolved. The attitude of the skeleton, the position of every element is selected to help create a sense of movement and story.
Once the armature is in place, the deep muscles are laid in and shaped, with the superficial anatomy following. Each part of the process contributes to help tell the story I am weaving into the piece. I articulate the story through armature, wax, light, and shadows; emulating the method of how a writer chooses words and sentence structures to create their story.
I believe for those who search out stories and for those who seek to tell them are, in the words of P. T. Nile, '...like beggars and beggars like to show other beggars where we discover the bread'.
M. B. Smith