Bone

Professor Nel once said to me that he was an artist who was a frustrated farmer but had he been a farmer he would have been a frustrated artist. He was my mentor at university and is my friend. He has been retired for a number of years but I have seen no evidence of his farming aspirations in the form of a pristine garden nor a vegetable patch lovingly tended.

Apart from an occasional slash and burn retaliation against the advancing jungle, his garden and house are usually overrun and it reminds me of the way the South American jungle swallowed the Mayan temples. The alien invaders are numerous and persistent, but the most onerous must be the frogs and toads.

The slimy green and warty hordes have long ago outmanoeuvred Jos and colonised his swimming pool. He, frustrated by the croaking and spawning masses, has abandoned the chlorine chemical warfare and yielding to their onslaught, retreated to the safety of his bedroom, where if there was a Sun God to worship, it emanated from the TV set.

Jos now feels that sculpture is too strenuous for him and gave me the elephant bone from which I made ‘Balance’. It is my largest bone sculpture to date and, I think, one of my best. This work articulates many different things. There is some formal exploration as I have used a variety of mediums and I am always trying to create a new exciting composition using the line, form, texture and colours that are available in the medium.

A railway ‘block’, the thing on which the railway track is mounted, makes for a very successful mount but is conceptually interesting as it reminds the viewer of my time spent on the railways. A twisted organic ‘pole’ that signifies growth emanates from the block and ends in the sculpture itself which balances on the pole by one foot.

The bone itself has some elements of purity and death and I have used contortions in the figure as a metaphor for emotions and in this instance they are all in balance. The bone is not the only debt I owe the professor as much of what I do is rooted in his and the Rhodes Art School’s legacy.

If you have seen some of Jos’s sculpture you will understand where I come from. If I was diligent and studious in my lectures I could have learnt more and been happier if I had paid more attention to Jos’s laissez-faire approach to life. It seems to me that more time should be spent on collecting mushrooms, visiting game reserves and fishing as I did as a student with Jos. It was a necessity for me at the time and I would have been a thinner student without the fish and mushrooms.

He, I presume, still has aspirations of being a farmer as he has bought a house in Bedford and I imagine he plans an orchard or veggie patch there. I do have a vegetable garden but it is primarily tended by my five year old son who digs a big hole and puts an entire packet of seeds in it and I, unlike Jos, do not want to be a farmer.

Perhaps I am an artist who is a frustrated fisherman but if I had been a fisherman…

Fishing for a living the way I do it would be a serious challenge as the amount of fish I catch these days could not even pay for the the tackle, let alone the petrol. I was better at it when I was a student, I was hungry and more driven.

Then if I could not catch the fish I could at least eat the bait. Now I am a lot more fussy and even if I can endure the smelly sardines I know my wife will not.

I must apologise for the photographs of this work. I use a black cloth as a background which sometimes works but in this case the pole and the foot of the sculpture do not show well. My photographs are often taken in haste and despite having done it for many years I have not mastered that art.

It seems I should have paid more attention to Obie Oberholser who lectured in photography when I was at Rhodes university. I see he is exhibiting at the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown and says he does not take photographs but makes them. The sentiment is typical of the Rhodes Art School when I was there. I think it puts the emphasis on the visual success of art works and on the artist as the craftsman. ‘Balance’ was spotted in my studio by a collector of my work and paid for when it was still being roughed out.

Since times are tough, I am delighted with the sale. Perhaps this is a case of there being not so many fish in the sea and a cabbage in the hand is worth two in Jos’s garden!

Travelling in my truck on the trail for new material is torture enough, but the recent return trip from Pont Drift was to be a true test of an artist’s commitment to his cause. I went to Johannesburg to drop off some new works at the Gallery on the Square and then the next day to pick up some bones on a farm near Pont Drift, which is 100 kilometres west of Messina on the border of Botswana.

The birds, landscape and the places from Polokwane through Alldays and further up North were wonderful. The road is the Mapungubwe route, there are many game farms along the way and Ratho Farm itself has some 9 000 crocodiles, a restaurant for vultures and is visited by elephants.

My adventure, apart from all the usual discomforts in that it was long, hot, noisy and expensive, proceeded well but a few kilometres into my return I discovered that I had no brakes and was unable to stop. There was no cellular signal and no traffic to flag down, so the only option I had was to simply drive on and find help. Obviously I had to proceed carefully, using my gears and trying to pre-empt anything that might happen. Fortunately the roads there are flat and there was little traffic, but it was still a rather scary endeavour as it was only 150 kilometres on, in Mogwadi, that I managed to locate a mechanic.

Being desperate, I would have agreed to any price and the price I paid was indeed dear! The repair was quickly done and I opened my wallet with some apprehension, but the mechanic refused any money and insisted that the price was for me to have a beer with him. It was to be a deal with the devil…

Mogwadi is hot and one beer was easily, if surreptitiously, replaced by another. Food was issued in and hungrily eaten but as the food and the beers were his, his generosity began to mitigate against my early departure. When a visit to the shebeen was mooted I believed I could buy my way out, but it was not to be. We went to the shebeen in his car and the few chores he needed to do cut off my escape. En route to fetch his brother, the good man ran over and collected 4 guinea fowl “for breakfast”. When brother Ben was collected, we checked up on the man who had been spat in the eye by a rinkhals earlier that day. We measured a farmer’s gatepost for the fabrication of a gate. Then with the beers, dry wors that we had bought, a blaring car radio, the three of us had a party in middle of nowhere!

From this point the events begin to resemble a bad LSD trip. At one point he sailed past the “Stop! Go!” controls and attendants into the oncoming traffic at 140 km/h, missing the oncoming cars by driving on the newly laid wet tar. He laughed uproariously whilst I sunk into the seat with my sweaty fingers gripping the seat in fear. Later he was unable to manage a cigarette and cell phones while simultaneously driving, he ran the car off the verge into the bush several times.

Fortunately the cigarette and cell phone were too important to put down, so I was given the helm to steer us home!

By now it was late and I willingly agreed to spend the night. I declined any further offers of alcohol and collapsed into a heaven sent bed. However, the fates were still conspiring against me and I was woken at 1.30am in the morning by a thunderstorm. Then at 2.30am, the mechanic needed to go to Vereeniging and I was turned out of the house and sent on my way back to Durban. Even for this seasoned ex truck driver the journey home was a long and difficult one.

Journeys have often been depicted by artists, perhaps for their unpredictability, perhaps because they test the travelers, perhaps as metaphors for life and for other reasons. There are examples of travel works from the earliest civilisations, including the Greeks who depicted scenes from the Odyssey and all the way through history to modern South African Art. ‘The Passage of Time’ is a work I delivered to Gallery on the Square. It depicts figures of various ages in a boat on a journey through time. A second work is the ‘Journey to the Unknown’ which is at the Strydom Gallery in George. Whilst it is also a boat with figures in it, it is different and is about a family’s journey together.

I am privileged to be opening the Fibre Artist Exhibition at The Complete Picture in Lillies Quarter Centre in Hillcrest on the 2nd of April 2008. All will be welcomed. You can look at some Fibre Art Works or speak to Sue, the gallery owner, on 083 673 7975. I will be speaking about Cinderella and her ugly step sister.

I guess that will be a trip of a different kind.