Inspiration comes from the strangest places. You see, I started casting bronzes in college. Before I left school to become a full time artist, I was a history major. I'd like to say that I had a grand plan to become a researcher or a professor, maybe even a biographer, but the sad reality was that I had absolutely no plans for the rest of my life. If I hadn't had taken a year off to travel Europe, if I hadn't missed my plane out of Rome, I might have never found my calling.
Left with a day to myself, I filled a conveniently open spot on a tour of Pompeii. As far as the sudden destruction of a civilization goes, Pompeii has fallen behind modern wonders such as the atomic bomb, but they lack the art and grace of a volcanic eruption. There's a special kind of beauty that you can only capture by preserving the last instances of a creature's life.
Back home, I didn't quite have a volcano at my beck and call, so I had to settle for the next best thing I could find. I enrolled in a casting class. Before long, I had a set of bronze candlesticks, a bronze pair of running shoes, and a bronzed music box that had once played a bit of Swan Lake. This kind of art was unsatisfying, to say the least, but it was necessary to learn what I was doing before I could get to the good stuff.
Once I had graduated from household objects, I started small. It didn't take long before my apartment was empty of roaches, rats, and other vermin. I started taking long car rides to the outskirts of town. I added a chipmunk, a rabbit, and even a bluejay to my collection.
There was one trip where I picked up a hitchhiker on the way home. The ride was fairly quiet for a few miles, but he got the brilliant idea that he could overpower me. He learned that I was stronger than I looked. I learned that human faces are far more expressive in death that your average rodent. That's also when I invested in a nasty little toxin developed by a bio-chem dropout.
I sold almost a hundred pieces before anyone really began to notice just how nice my little neighborhood was getting. There were no drifters, no prostitutes, and no dealers crowding the street corners. I actually was in the process of picking out a new place in a worse part of town when I caught a snippet of a conversation between my girlfriend and her aunt. The bits I overheard left me chilled. She knew. She was going to expose me. I had to do something. I didn't have a choice.
Officially, the statue is a memorial to my lost love, capturing the last time I saw her before she went missing. The collector I sold it to had taken it out of the States and didn't want to bother with any of the legal messiness. Besides, when they finally caught up with me, there were more than enough of my pieces out there. You live, you learn.
But take my mistakes to heart. Find out what inspires you. Go out. Make art.
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