As of now, I do two types of sculpture, although I wouldn’t classify either one of them as sculpture in the way people generally think of sculpture.

The first type I do is using found stone in the Florida Keys, which is usually a random piece of coral, which you usually see used as a decoration for gardens or on the side of driveways.  I look for a particular interest in the structure of the coral and how it speaks to me.  I do the same thing in Ireland.  Ireland is all rock, and so, as I walk in the country, I happen upon hundreds of cast-away pieces of stone, and they talk to me also, as to what their character is, what their spirit is.  When I go to make these into artworks, I don’t change them physically by knocking off any of the pieces or sculpting them traditionally, but I paint the stone, and I paint what I see on the inside of the piece.  Then I may take pieces of wire, whether it be silver sodder or plain coat hangers or whatever, and drill into the top to make halos or hair.  That would be the only addition that I would make to the piece.  Then I look in junkyards for pieces of steel that are of interest to me.  I may mark them off and have somebody use a torch to cut them.  Then I drill a hole in the bottom and stick them in.  They are three-dimensional paintings, as I see them.

For pieces like the ones in the sculpture park in Barcelona, I design the pieces in much the way that Picasso designed the sculpture in Daley Plaza in Chicago:  writing up the specifications, sending them to a steel company to fabricate it, etcetera.  I do the same thing with steel or piping or whatever I decide is the best material.  Then I pick the colors out and paint them.  I may do that by myself or socially with schoolchildren or other sorts of institituions, so that it becomes an event that everybody is involved with.  With my sculpture pieces in Barcelona, I have started a practice that every year, each one of the pieces is adopted by a group, and over the period of a year, they decide how they want to repaint it:  what colors, maybe they’ll paint an image on it, and everybody looks forward to this as a communal get-together.  It’s a teaching tool for a group to make a decision and execute it in a way which is a synthesis of their thoughts.  When I arrive at these institutions, I’m always approached by students telling me how they’ve enjoyed painting the sculptures, and the process they went through deciding the colors for that year.  Those kind of encounters are the kinds of encounters I live for.

So the sculpture pieces are far from a Michelangelo type of traditional sculpture.  They’re how I would imagine my painted people and spirits would look if they were in three dimensions.

Thanks for the question,
Matt