Lost Wax

It’s crazy how a nose from one direction can look perfectly fine, and viewed from 180 degrees, it’s too close to the eye. When I work on small wax figures, I turn them continuously around in my hands, making sure, for example, the left elbow doesn’t extend below the hip while I carve the right side of the torso. Working on a larger piece, I circle continuously; this partner dance assures everything works from all perspectives. 

Refuge, 2020, in wax in my studio. The endangered sea turtle and giraffe are rescuing the humans.

Our planet faces a ferocious loss of habitat, fifty percent of the species on the earth have disappeared in the last forty to fifty years. We’re a destructive species causing the acidifying of the ocean, the loss of precious topsoil, and the poisoning of the very air we breathe. The animals haven’t caused this harm—we have. But I like to think, despite our recklessness and selfishness, they would choose to save us.

I delivered Refuge to the foundry in early January, needing to cut off the giraffe’s legs to fit in my car. 

The turtle arrives at the foundry.

Not a problem for Zach Gabbard, owner and sole fabricator at Mission Foundry in Hyde Park. He will be taking it further apart—flippers, turtle shell, giraffe head, giraffe tail, turtle tail, and each individual person to make rubber molds.

Once he has the rubber molds, he will pour casting wax into them—the small figures solid, the large shapes like the giraffe body receive a thin layer so they can be hollow. When Zach has these wax pieces complete, he will attach the small ones together and build a funnel above each one—the constructions, intriguing modern mobiles.

The next step is to create the molds to receive the molten bronze. Each of these wax mobiles are dipped into a silica slurry nine times to slowly building up the mold. They are dipped, then coated with sand, and hung to dry for at least a day between dips.

At the pour, the funnel on top of each mold receives the liquid bronze, the wax melts out, lost wax, and the bronze hardens. These hard shells are then hammered and broken to free them from the bronze inside.  

There are still days of work ahead for Zach. He has to cut off the sprues and funnels. He has to sandblast each piece to get the specks of hard shell out of every crevice. Then the individual pieces will be welded together. Zach has to know how to replicate the textures I sculpt in my wax sculpture, and he has to do it in metal so the welded seams disappear. He has to care about the subtleties of the texture, with the deliberateness of a poet choosing words to describe the grooved furrows of an oak trunk.

I returned to the foundry a few weeks ago to position each of the the small bronze figures on the backs of the giraffe and turtle. Zach welded each one in place.

Then Refuge received its final patina and wax polish. It’s a long process. This piece is signed and numbered 1/5. Though my original waxes have disappeared, I have the molds to make four more copies. But always, for each one, we have to first make a new wax model, then cast it into bronze. After five copies, we’ll destroy the molds. 

Lost wax is an apt metaphor for these times: The only way to create something new is to lose something.  While we are collectively facing tremendous loss, it is good to reflect on the space that allows for something new to arise. The loss is real—people’s lives, habitat, species, jobs, freedom. I am alarmed, but I dearly want to believe that we can turn things around. We need humility. We need respect for every living being on the planet. Then the turtle and the giraffe, the heron and the wasp, the oak, the waterlily, and even the gnat will all be helping because we are all interconnected.

Refuge would have been outdoors at the Fuller Museum this summer, but Covid has delayed the opening of the New England Sculptors Exhibit until spring 2021. It sits on a chunk of bedrock outside my studio. I’d love to send more casting work Zach’s way, so if you would be interested in a copy of Refuge for your own garden, let’s talk. 

Refuge, bronze, 2020

Refuge is a hopeful piece. The determined, young giraffe and the tireless turtle are unconcerned with the enormity of their mission. They echo the world’s need for us to engage, to bring our gifts, and to offer help in this time of great loss. It’s a collective dance we can’t do alone.

Catalpa: The Hugging Tree

Catalpa Tree in Bloom, June 27, 2020

In full white flowering, a trillion frilly night moths perch on stems, sending out sweet scents of rose and bergamot. These clutches of flowers, each the size of a newborn child, balance at the end of every leaf cluster. The leaves, heart-shaped and lime green, lay open to the sky, each one positioned for the best photosynthesis. Catalpas reach peak bloom near the summer solstice, late for most trees in our climate. Summer is too hot for delicate blossoms.

Everything about this tree is large, embracing, and opulent. The wood, uprising from the ground, a trio of trunks, holds so much weight its steep ascent is inconceivable. It must be in the third octave of its life. Such a magnum opus. The tree dwarfs the building behind, my studio.

From the studio loft window I have watched a pair of swallows sit together, then fly off, soaring, and mating. Their brood began life in the bird box a few paces away. Red-winged blackbirds often sit on a branch and squawk, while nuthatches pace up and down the trunk. These tiny birds peck at bugs in the bark, quietly though, not like the red-hatted pileated woodpecker’s incessant jackhammering.

A few years back we had a tree company put two cables into the tree, worried about losing one of the trunks in a storm. This trinity of trunks now supports each other. One large branch broke two years ago. The branch dove to the ground and shattered, the wound along it—an accordion of frayed wood. But I wanted to leave it, not remove it, to see if it would heal. Now, buttressed by earth, new branches grow, flower, and bear fruit.

The tree grows twenty yards from the pond. I imagine it drinks heartily with every meal. Big tankards of H2O. Its size is quite out of scale for our small farm, but the Catalpa’s nature is to keep growing—water the source of its ecstasy.

The Catalpa makes its own shade, its own ecosystem, its own refuge. But now the bloom is over. The flowers are faded and brown, the scent has turned musky. It’s been such a presence in my life for the last ten days, I took my meditation cushion outside to sit near its trunk. That’s when I started using the pronoun “she” and “her” when I referred to the Catalpa. Her branches, her blossoms. She became more than tree to me. She became protector and guide.

While writing about her, I remembered that in my dream last night. I met an Indian woman, dressed in a drab brown and gray sari, with drab-colored brown and gray hair in a bun, and I knew it was Amaa, the hugging saint. I’ve never met her, but I’ve heard friends tell of their experiences, the process of waiting in a long line sometimes for hours, for the few seconds or minute it takes to receive her hug-blessing. In my meeting with Amaa, she cupped my shoulders with her hands, and then bowed my head so we lost eye contact but our foreheads joined. We were sisters, or mother and daughter, or some connected ancestor. She said, “Baruch Shalom” three times. Baruch is the beginning word of many Jewish prayers and means blessed. Shalom means peace.

The Catalpa tree became Amaa, became the carrier of this message of peace, strength, and resiliency. She communicated that we have untapped powers within us we are not aware of. The passing away of the blossoms became the rising of another voice, a steadfast and calming voice, reaching out to meet us. Inviting us into her embrace, always with open arms, the hugging tree, offering refuge.

Catalpa Tree, July 4, 2020

Pedaling Peace

A dear friend of ours, Sam Gloyd, age 74, is on the road—solo biking cross-country. After Sam’s send-off at the Family Promise Metrowest center in Natick, Massachusetts, a national organization that assists homeless families, Sam biked to Old Frog Pond Farm. Blase and I chatted with him about his trip until Sam said, “Don’t you guys eat lunch around here?”

A few years ago, Sam gave up his therapeutic practice, moved out of the room he rented in a shared house, sold or gave away his possessions, and began a series of volunteer jobs at retreat centers across America and in Europe. He returned from Spain and Portugal to Natick, staying with his ex-wife, Karen, to spend the holidays with their three children and two grandsons.

While in the area, he approached Family Promise Metrowest about volunteering, and they asked if he’d like a paying job driving their van instead. They needed a driver for the 6–8 am morning shift to take families to work and children to school. Then Covid hit, his driving services were no longer needed, and the retreat centers all over the world closed indefinitely.  

I asked Sam why pedaling.

“I love biking and can keep social distance on a bike, and I have some work to do with my sisters in Indiana. Collectively we’ve all mistreated mother earth. And I’m pedaling for my own penance and how I’ve caused hurt and injury to my sisters.”

Pedaling for Peace and Penance was born.

Blase Provitola and Sam Gloyd with the flag that took a farm to make. Blase bought the material, Ariel Matisse sewed it, and Holly Cyganiewicz painted it.

Sam and his sisters seem to represent the great American divide. Sam explained, “When Trump was elected president one of my sisters said, ‘Finally our country can return to our moral values.’” They couldn’t openly accept that Sam is a gay man.

I asked if they knew he was on the way to see them. Sam replied, “My brother told me, ‘Be aware, the closer you get to Fort Wayne, Indiana, the weaker the bridges are.’”

When Sam shared his plans for this bike trip with the “incredible group of women” who run Family Promise Metrowest, they got excited and wanted to be part of it. The organization not only offered him a generous donation but reached out to Family Promise centers in every city he would be biking through, requesting them to offer Sam a meal, a tent site, and a shower.

After Indiana he’ll take inventory and see if he has the energy to go on. But on his mind is a visit to a retired Methodist Minister in Michigan who was a spiritual mentor and married Sam and his wife. He’d also like to bike across Wisconsin, visit the Twin Cities, and is drawn to visit Standing Rock. And everywhere he goes, he shares the compassionate work of Family Promise’s 200 centers.

“I love seeing how providence will support me and open doors,” he said.

I hold Sam’s journey like a fan that is narrow at the bottom and widens out in both directions. He’ll be making new friends and reuniting with old ones. Especially significant will be the meeting with his sisters in Indiana. When we spoke, he seemed a little worried. He shared that he wasn’t always willing to understand their side. But Sam is a man with a big heart, and he truly desires to create peaceful ground with his sisters.

He told us he had just reread the slim book by Paul Coehlo, The Alchemist, popular in the early 80s. The protagonist crosses the desert and encounters many challenges seeking his legend. I think Sam is creating his own legend. He is inspiring people to get out of the box, think wider and larger, and take up that freedom that belongs inherently to each of us. His creative energy is bringing more peace into our divided world.

At a pause in our conversation Sam said, “Don’t you guys eat lunch around here?” When both Blase and I shrugged sometimes, he said, “Well, I’m hungry.” We scurried off to make a send-off lunch, delighting him with a large, fresh salad, bread, and cheese. Sam had already picked four pints of strawberries. These we put in a plastic container and strapped the box between his saddle bags. 

Peddle your Love, Sam! You have so much to give!

Sam Gloyd and Linda Hoffman socially distancing.

Follow Cycling with Sam on Family Promise’s website.
Watch an ABC Channel 5 interview!
Donate to his campaign here.

See Change

For those of you who live in the Greater Boston area, here’s something wonderful to see!  See Change is Studio Without Walls’ new exhibit of site-responsive sculpture along the Riverway Park in Brookline. The exhibit was to have opened in April but was postponed indefinitely because of Covid. Now, through the downright doggedness of its founder, Bette Ann Libby, and the willingness of the Brookline Parks and Open Spaces Department, it’s open to the public, free—and a pure delight! When Holly Cyganiewicz and I were installing our sculpture, A Tree Grows in Brookline, two fathers, both with children under three years old, stopped to chat. They walk this lovely oasis every day while on childcare duty. We’ll be back, they each said.

A Tree Grows in Brookline, Linda Hoffman and Holly Cyganiewicz; tree trunk with burl, painted curly willow branches

I was delighted to see Bob Shannahan’s life-size Mastodon and its Mother, made with alder and sumac branches, a sculpture exhibited at Old Frog Pond Farm last fall. And to find,Julie Lupien Nussbaum’s Alien Fishery, where she’s augmented the lone fish accompanying her sculpture Vodnik with Cruel Shoes also exhibited at the farm, and created a school of fish hanging from a high oak branch. If there’s a slight breeze, when you pause to watch, they turn as one body. Some sculptures in this family-friendly exhibit respond to the devastation of our planet, others to the need for justice and equality, and some captivate and offer hope for the future with their colors and shapes.

Studios Without Walls is a Brookline-based collaborative group of sculptors and conceptual artists who produce exhibitions of art in outdoor and public settings. Their commitment is to bring art to their community and educate audiences to appreciate and participate with outdoor sculpture. Photographs of this year’s installations, site maps, as well as treasure hunt clues are online at Studios Without Walls. Globe Correspondent Karen Campbell wrote in her glowing review, “With sculptures tailored to nestle in and around the trees, a leisurely amble offers a surprising visual treat of clever, substantive, thought-provoking art.”

Bllnkah II Liz Helfer; broken windshield glass

Brookline’s Parks and Open Space director said, “Brookline’s Studios Without Walls affirms the power of art to change your perspective.” The thirteen participating artists are Gail Jerauld Bos, Grey Held, Liz Helfer, Linda Hoffman and Holly Cyganiewicz, Janet Kawada, Bette Ann Libby, Julie Lupien Nussbaum, Madeleine Lord, Maria Ritz, Bob Shannahan, Marnie Sinclair, Allen M. Spivack, and Delanie Wise.

The exhibit is open through September 7, 2020. Wear your masks, stay six feet apart, and take a stroll along the Muddy River. The Longmont T stop will take you there and free parking is available on nearby streets.

Thank you Brookline Parks and Open Spaces, sponsors and supporters of Studios Without Walls, and especially the artists. We all want to “See Change”!!