Got another large stone from Pierrot to work on. Looking at it, with the idea of Ezekiel in mind, I did some small sketches and then started carving him in the summer.
How did Ezekiel feel inside himself, his mind and his body as well as his emotions, as he experienced his visions of the heavens, the colors, the wheels, the angels? What can it possibly feel like? I wanted to show Ezekiel pulling the visions of wheels from his torso, all the visions that must have taken him over viscerally as well as mentally and emotionally. Ezekiel with an expression on his face of absorption – almost absence of self, blind to his surroundings while focusing and concentrating on his vision. Helplessly on his knees, in submission and in thrall.
Ezekiel is known as having had the typical 2-part experience of a prophet: he experienced or received a divine vision, and then he shared and distributed it. Yet perhaps there is more to the story than simply receiving a vision. What might be happening in the individual who experiences this, a kind of meeting of divine and human? How do the interactions between the two possibly spark alternate paths or understandings? And ultimately, is it really possible for the human to meet the divine, is the idea of this experience simply an expression of yearning? Or can a spark be created and ignite something true if the humble whole of the individual’s humanity is brought to the party with the divine? The idea of humility as the filter of the divine, the translator, the only way to get it, and go on to become the prophet?
I started carving Ezekiel in 1983, worked on him again in winter/spring ’84, and then he was vandalized, knocked over from his pedestal, broken into irreparable pieces. I saved the head, finished it at L’Ubac, transforming Ezekiel into Hermès.
Most blind, Hermes has no eyeballs, his left eyebrow is exaggeratedly puzzled and frowned into a wing shape, and he has wings sprouting from his head instead of on a cap. The “wings” are found objects: filigree pieces from a hanging oil lamp that I found in the dump.