Artist’s Statement

In creating Joy, I wanted its creative process to be a purposeful escape from the intellectual and spiritual fatigue I was feeling at the time. It is significant that I made this particular piece while I was also working on some very thought-provoking, deep, spiritual sculptures, like Found!, and Forgiven and Restored. Working on Joy gave me a welcomed departure from those wonderfully redemptive but spiritually heavier works. It gave my mind a break from thinking in weighty spiritual orbits. When I’d go to work on Joy, my mind could disengage from my normal pastoral, spiritual mode and engage in... well, nothing all that heavy!

Other than those underlying motives, this sculpture has no profound message or meaning. The title sums it up: Joy. Happiness! Fun! Exuberance! In the look of the face you get the main idea – this guy is really happy. I mean, how many times is a person so happy that he just has to grab his lapels?

This was only about the 4th or 5th large bust I’d done in my life. I was just starting to learn how to do teeth. In this work, as in much of my work, the expression is very important. An untrained person would be shocked to find out how many intricate angles there are in the human face! To make them work together to convey a cohesive expression can be quite challenging. In this work, my anatomical goal was simple: make the facial angles say, “joy!”

The thick sweater was a fun, new challenge - I really enjoyed using tools on the very gritty (i.e. “high grog”) clay. Also, the poplar base was one of my first using my new jig saw. In the end, I really like this sculpture. It’s surely a pleasant piece to look at. It always makes me feel good. I hope it makes you feel that way, too.