Blue Whole Gallery 3D Juried Show

Here I am at Blue Whole Gallery with my sculpture “Daphne Becomes Laureate” at the 2020 3D Juried Show opening reception. I was honored to have my work selected for the show by the juror, sculptor Mike McCollum, former dean at the Cornish College of the Arts. Although wind and rain stormed outside, inside the gallery was full of people, art, color, and light.

“Daphne Becomes Laureate” was inspired by Rilke’s 12th sonnet in Sonnet to Orpheus, Series 2. Daphne, pursued by Apollo, transforms and flowers into her true self, as explained by Erich Neumann in Art and the Creative Unconscious, a book I highly recommend:

“The flame at the beginning of the poem, in which the thing escapes from enduring being to burning transformation, has its counterpart in the end; the eternally fugitive becomes a plant eternally rooted in being. In Apollo’s love for Daphne, the pursuing god compels transformation; here again there is a creative sublimation of the soul, a higher love. For the Daphne who has escaped in the higher growth of her plant existence now feels ‘herself laurel.’

“Now she is subject to the law and the love of Orpheus, of whom Rilke said; “Song is existence.” Yet because it is existence, this higher existence of song, which captures the laurel-like soul, is not static but eternally moving…And although that which is consumed by the flame and that which pours forth in the spring were contained in the elementary nature of the creative, the soul transformed in the midst of this creation had become something older and higher. It is the partner of the divine song of which it is said: ‘A breath for nothing, A breathing in God, A Wind.’ Daphne, having taken root, desires only to be captivated; she desires only higher transformation—of herself, of God, of us. ‘….And Daphne, transformed, feeling herself laurel, wants you to change into wind.’”

The show will be up until February 1. Daphne Becomes Laureate is available there for purchase.

Thanks to everyone at Blue Whole Gallery and Mike McCollum for a wonderful start to the New Year.