This was the firstnewly-quarried large block of stone, that I got to work on. It was a stone that seemed to both capture and radiate all the sunlight of the summer. The work on it continued through the fall.

I was equally interested in working abstractly (or non-representationally) and figuratively (representationally), the “style” of sculpture didn’t seem to be the major point. Most important for me was to work in the right “style”, the “right” set of forms for each idea, inspiration, or “provocation”.

With this stone, I wanted to develop the discussion started in the Wings piece: the creation of movement asformal narrative, via repetition of similarly shaped abstract forms. I did some planning and sketched some possibilities. Thinking about a group of forms as integers: separate but similar and each integer with equally important function as well as shape. An immediate overall impression would be conveyed via the arrangement of the integers – the “x” in this case,but also a series of relationships between the integers was to be “read”. “Integers” as anonymous elements, “integers” as alphabet, beginning of a formal language of my own; completely intrigued with an abstract way of working as exploration of the effects of design and treatment on movement and message.

Here in “4 Ways” there should be a kind of pulsing of opposites: levitation vs. falling, floating vs. clinging, dispersion vs. stasis. I wanted to find out: How to make the integers defy gravity and levitate while still obeying gravity in their weighty merging together? How to position and shape them to create enough hide and seek of light, shadow and air to make them cling together while floating around each other? The answers were to be explored in this and many other pieces in the future.