This piece started out as a Halloween concept for a
skeleton. See my blog post,” The Creative Process” posted March 7th,
2012 to read more about the decisions that were the origins of the piece.
Once the skeleton, car, and devil had been created, I had
not planned to do any more to the piece.
However, the sculpture did not seem to have any context. I played around with several concepts before
finally settling on one. These concepts
ranged from light hearted Halloween themes to funereal themes, to religious
concepts of the devil. For a while I was
stuck.
I practiced my technique of asking a question and then
quickly writing down the first five answers that came to my head. Since I had started with the skeleton, I
returned there for some answers. When I
asked myself what thoughts came up when I thought about skeletons in general,
many of the usual symbolic answers came up:
death, corruption/decay of the body, passage of time, etc. These themes had also come up in the creation
of the automobile in the piece. The
bodies of living things are not the only things that decay. Automobiles breakdown and can be damaged
beyond repair ending their useful “life”.
Buildings age and need repair. Towns and cities age and change over time. The buildings reflect the passage of time by
the having different shapes, different window styles, and choices of building
materials. Some towns and cities grow
and remain vital. Other towns and cities
reach a zenith and then growth slows or stops.
These towns or small cities become time capsules of a particular era. No new building takes place. It is during such a time of economic downturn that
my small town’s story takes place.
I have always been sensitive to emotional energy. When I try to create a sculpture, I try to
capture the emotional energy as well as the form. When the economy fails, it starts a cascade
of events both physical and emotional. And that is the basis of the story behind my
diorama “Devil Looking for Trouble in a
Small Town.”
Everything that happens in a big city also happens in a
small town. It is just a matter of
scale. An economic downturn affects
small places with only a few industries much harder than big cities. When factories close and businesses fail,
there is little left to sustain the communities. The financial meltdown on Wall Street caused
problems for practically everyone. For
some, that problem was a number on paper.
For millions of others, it damaged their way of life to the point that
their lives may not ever be fully repaired.
The financial damage causes a cascade of other social problems such as
increases in unemployment, bankruptcy, home foreclosures, family break ups, suicide,
alcoholism, and violence. Feelings run
towards stress, worry, despair, and fear of future troubles. This is the devil that is cruising through a
small town in my diorama.
The “devil” of this economic disaster may have been
conceived on Wall Street, but his hunting ground is in the small towns. You can tell there is financial damage in the
cities. That devastation is magnified in
smaller economies. Devils thrive in an
area of stress, turmoil, and despair.
That is why the devil is looking for trouble in a small town.
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