SCULPTURE

METAL SCULPTURE

“There is that in me – I do not know what it is but I know it is in me. Wretch’d and sweaty – calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep – I sleep long. I do not know it – it is without name – it is a word unsaid, it is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol. Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters. Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death – it is form, union, plan – it is eternal life – it is Happiness.” Walt Whitman

After my 2015 solo exhibit of LATITUDE ZERO at Kinshasa's Trust Merchant Bank’s exhibition hall, Le Monde des Flamboyants, the director’s wife, a kind-hearted patroness of Congolese arts, inquisitively asked, “What will consume you now since you can’t scurry around the world?” I honestly didn’t know. I just had to remain true to my poetic vision and keep creating. I always felt an instinctual pull towards metal sculptures. “I need to learn how to weld,” I impulsively answered. She had the perfect contact.

Eddy Mbikulu, an accomplished Congolese artist, with a heart of gold and smile longer than the Congo River, became my mentor. I was blown away by his metal bending skills and dedication in spite of the dire Congolese political turmoil and day-to-day hardships. He took me under his wing, taught me stick welding and how every found object from the mundane to precious had its own song. I learned how to bring the outward inward and then inward outward, listening to the tune of different objects and finding the harmony deep inside to outwardly create structural melodies.

I wandered Kinshasa's junk streets and abandoned factories accumulating a random collection of metal objects begging for cohesion. I began with a simple HERM-APHRO-DITE sculpture (2 sides to 1 being) and ended with life size sculptures of Madame et Monsieur COBRA. In between, there were commissions to make other small Hermaphrodite sculptures and bigger kinetic sculptures, 2 fish twirling in an eternal kiss and a spinning butterfly, among others. I became known in the atelier as ‘Mama Monique’ and on the street, ‘Mundele’ or white person in Lingala. I didn’t care for the latter because I was in metal heaven, being true to myself and creating authentically and my Congolese brother's sculptures and joie de vivre were constant sources of inspiration. Enter my metalmorphosis chapter.

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Robert Norman "Bob" Ross(October 29, 1942 – July 4, 1995) was an American painter, art instructor, and television host.[1] He is best known as the creator and host of The Joy of Painting, a television program that appeared on PBS in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Hasui Kawase(May 18, 1883 – November 7, 1957) was a prominent Japanese painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and one of the chief printmakers in the shin-hanga ("new prints") movement.

Kawase worked almost exclusively on landscape and townscape prints based on sketches he made in Tokyo and during travels around Japan. However, his prints are not merely meishō (famous places) prints that are typical of earlier ukiyo-e masters such as Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Kawase's prints feature locales that are tranquil and obscure in urbanizing Japan.

In 1923 there was a great earthquake in Japan that destroyed most of his artwork.

Alphonse Legros(8 May 1837 – 8 December 1911), painter, etcher and sculptor was born in Dijon.

As he had casually picked up the art of etching by watching a comrade in Paris working at a commercial engraving, so he began the making of medals after a walk in the British Museum, studying the masterpieces of Pisanello, and a visit to the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris. Legros, considered the traditional journey to Italy a very important part of artistic training, and in order that his students should have the benefit of such study he devoted a part of his salary to augment the income available for a travelling studentship. His later works, after he resigned his professorship in 1892, were more in the free and ardent manner of his early days—imaginative landscapes, castles in Spain, and farms in Burgundy, etchings like the series of "The Triumph of Death," and the sculptured fountains for the gardens of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey.

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