Thursday October 30th, 2008
Oku, Shintani, Finnerty Art
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| The sculptor Densaburo Oku, or “Dense” or “Mr. Oku”, in his workshop. He had already a distinguished career in Japan before coming to the US twenty years ago. He casts, molds and blows glass and works metal. |
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| We have ten fish by Densaburo Oku. The metal combines found and reworked parts, and the glass is colored and cast. We were attracted to the symbol of the fish skeletons, due to the Native American use of fish guts for fertilizer. |
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| This one has a special color to the bones. Note his use in the spinal column of glass insulators for the vertebrae. |
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| The first to come with small cast glass eyes. |
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| They swim around in the Happiness Garden. |
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| The painted metal is especially nice in this one. |
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| Over 6 feet tall, this is our first fish, done in black glass. The massive head is always buried in fall leaves. |
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| Daisuke Shintani has made a large series of water forms. The leaf is an actual leaf cast in bronze and the drop is a combination of cast and blown glass. |
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| Our first work of art here at Fordhook was this tall three-branched tree (10 feet) of black iron with cast and blown glass eyes. I fell in love with it because it was the first time I noticed a “plant” noticing me. |
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| Bronze sculpture of the titaness Rhea who was the mother of Zeus, the first god in Greek religion. Eric Finnerty casts plant parts separately—in this case fern fronds for the face and bust, deciduous tree leaves for the hair, and an unidentified woodland orchid behind her right ear—and then works and welds them together, piece by piece. The model, much as the Greeks and Romans often used “foreign” captives for their sculptures, is Afro-Asian. One of a series. |
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| Another with different elements, a daisy in her left ear and mushrooms sprouting off her shoulder and near her nape—all cast in bronze. |
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| My favorite is Rhea made up of nasturtium leaves with the little stems still attached and sticking out. The effect is wonderfully mysterious, with large leaves for the hair and added topknot ponytail. She was the titaness or humanoid supreme spirit of fertility. Her husband was Chronos, the titan of time. The two of them emerged from the sky, Uranus, and the earth, Gaea—the actual things themselves. |
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Your newsletters showing sculptures and gardens are just awesome. Thank-you, Bonna