What Is Sculpture?

(A presentation introducing sculpture to students of sculpture course)

The Basis of sculpture is play. Its remembering when you were a child and remembering the feeling you had when you were immersed in your own world of make believe. I was 12 when Star Wars came out. I must have made models and drawings of every spaceship and character in the film. I used cardboard, toilet rolls, kitchen rubbish bottle tops, biscuit tins, old damaged toys, wire, airfix model kits, bostik glue, and just about anything I could get my hands on. I made my own fully functioning light sabre out of kitchen paper rolls painted silver and a detachable bamboo stick painted with luminescent paint.

Making sculpture is based on the same impulse that wanting to make your own toys as a child is based upon and we can see this very clearly in this video of American sculptor Alexander Calder demonstrating his circus.

I saw this in the Whitney museum in New York when studying as an Art Student many years ago. It had a profound effect on me. You can see that all of calder's "serious" sculpture emerges from this way of working and thinking. Its a completely natural way to think and be. Its naive and beautiful, it is innocent and charming. In many ways it is childlike. Being a sculptor means putting yourself in touch with this side of yourself. Your inner child. Being an artist means getting to know yourself. Everything you do as an artist emerges from this exploration. We depict an inscape of that world. This video delightfully shows an artist lost in themselves and contrary what we might expect when watching an artist at work, here we directly benefit from watching a theatrical display of this process in action.

Calder is true and honest in the portrayal of this inner action and we can only be delighted by the display it produces.

I remember as a child when I was ill I had a little jotter that I filled with small copperwire drawings selotaped into the pages. I didn't know I was making a transition from 2D to 3D. I was just doing something that came naturally to me. It was only years later I saw the wire sculptures of Calder

If you want to explore a simple way to make sculpture try it for yourself. Get a pliers , snips and any wire you can find, (strip down electrical cable if you need) and see if you can make forms that are familiar to you, a household pet, a farm animal or even a self portrait... It is a wonderful way of exploring most basic way of describing shapes and volumes. Recycling found materials is best. Maybe like Calder you can add different things like cork and wool to make these shapes even more alive.

A Five Minute Talk About Two Works

A Talk given to fellow artists on the Masters Course (MFA1) at NCAD, Dublin Ireland on the 13th of October 2008.....

I love making art... It is a passion that reflects my deepest desires and longings. I feel what I make has a relevance in a world gone mad.

As Edvard Munch once said .. "Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye. It also includes the inner pictures of the soul" This is the landscape I try to paint and fill with objects that I make.

Indian Sculptors today when making their bronzes of their gods and goddesses always leave the engraving of the eyes until last because it is then that they believe that the presence of the God fills the work. This is a tradition that goes back thousands of years. It is out of this desire that they make their work in difficult conditions and with little profit. I believe like them that God peeps out at us through the works we make despite the huge difference the last century has made to the shapes and forms of art.

I hope that I make art not for my Self. I feel what I make can serve people in some way, not because of who I am, but despite who I am. Because that seems to be the nature of making things, its as if we reach across a divide when we make something... it feels as if we pull back from there something that is normally beyond the material grasp. We can surprise ourselves and others in this way. And God Knows we can all do with a few surprises.

The Ready Boat Pillar made for Howth County Dublin in 1996 surprised me when it had something of a Baptism of Fire when it came into the world. It was Launched By Gay Byrne who lives in Howth, The veil around it was set on fire ... The evening Herald rang me to let me know the next morning and wanted to get my reaction. I said I was shocked of course, but Secretly I was delighted ... The headline that day in the paper had a picture of Gay Byrne and the pillar that read... "Vandals hit "pillar" of Howth"..... It also had a photo of me with a large brush acid-etching away the burn marks from the surface of the pillar.. I'm there wIth a large smile on my face... Would they have noticed I wondered to myself, that I had ever made a sculpture if it wasn't for those vandals? I might try burning a few sculptures for my MA.

But thats the nature of public art and I learned a valuable lesson then. No man or woman is an island. We need an audience to function, its just another piece of proof that goes to show that Art does not serve the artist alone.


My work has always had a relationship with the public. I love showing the work I make when I can. Although I have ideas about the meaning of what I make I never assume that am the only one who knows what it means.


The second, very recent piece is called "The Traveller" it contains objects that I sculpted and drawings that I made that are literally worked into the piece. Its a recent work quite large and detailed. It is set in an apple orchard around this time of year. The woman has taken objects out of a wooden box she carries and has laid them on a cloth . Each object can symbolise something for the viewer. The woman's presence is central to the meaning of the work. Her relationship is with the viewer and I leave it to you to decide who "The Traveller" maybe. But this work exploits the different levels of reality that can be explored through the piece. There is the viewer that regards the work . There is the woman who is a representation of someone real and she looks upon the objects that are representations of sculptures I made ... then these lie upon drawings which represent other things. And yet they all co-exist in this space , in an eternal Now that changes only if you care to look closer. The representation can hopefully emphasise the change in ourselves as we look upon the piece and travel through it. The Piece will be exhibited along with other works in The Nora Dunne Gallery named after Ben Dunne's Mother. (Ben Dunne is former director of the family firm chain of Dunnes Stores Shopping in Ireland)

On that note, I look forward to travelling with you all here on our journeys through our own unique landscapes... I wish you well. Thankyou.