As a young Sculptor I came to learn about the great Anthony Caro at exactly the same time as I was studying the remarkable Hindu sculptures made in India. There was one master piece of Sculpture in the collection of the Edmonton Art Gallery ( Art Gallery of Alberta ) that my professor Peter Hide taught us to consider very carefully. 30 years later in November of 2018 I found myself being offered an opportunity to go to India to make sculpture. Kshitish Das contacted me and after much effort to arrange for people to cover my contract teaching at the University of Alberta, I was on the other side of the earth working flat out to make a sculpture along side 16 other international artists and some of the very most famous Indian Sculptors in that great country. I couldn’t know what tools or materials might be available, nor did I know the conditions, circumstances or people I was going to be sharing time with. I took a major leap of faith based on a feeling in my heart about Indian people based largely on the nature of the ancient stone sculptures that has stirred something in me those many years ago.
It was a very hard workload, heat and humidity and uncertainty over what materials.tools or resources made beginning anything a blind proposition, but again, take the leap of faith….measure the resources available and try to keep hydrated and maintain kidney function! There were younger artists assigned to work with the international artists, and many of them had sustainable studios of their own. I was very grateful to Rahul Bante and Akash Tirmal who were two of the great young artists who impressed be very much. Rahul and I collaborated and we made a large sprawling sculpture that featured human structure holding up Natural rocks that were specific from the actual site. There were seven stones, one representing each continent and the installation that we made was done in a specific site in the new Sculpture Park with the idea that the visual vectors of a near by canopy of trees would descend, flow through the energy of the sculpture and then rise up and out the other end into a large tree outside of the walls of the sculpture park.
It was a life changing trip to spend time in India and I am forever grateful to these kind, and strong people