Mar
5
2019
Harold Siefert
Sculpture has always drawn my attention. From the first I remember noticing art, I remember noticing sculpture. Whenever I visited museums or art galleries I went to the sculpture installations first and stayed longest. But, like most people, I never thought about making sculptures. I had a decent job and life where people depended on my stability. Then, in 2000, I was laid off from the decentÈ job I had for 17 years. The severance package included a yearÈs pay, and I was in no hurry to find a new job too quickly. I decided to take a class or two. I was in Houston, so it wasn’t long before a Glassell School catalog came my way, and I saw it – Sculpture Class. Why not? As I took class after class and experimented with different mediums, I fell in love with Bronze kind of at-first-sight! Cast bronze is a very difficult and time-consuming medium. I do all my own work – from start to finish. I don’t complain (much). I appreciate the medium and love my time working with it. Production time goes by too fast sometimes. I enjoy the process – starting with an idea and seeing it develop. At times the initial image changes significantly, evolves into something much different than I initially intended. I’ve come to accept this evolution and keep an open mind to it. I love putting humor into my work. I enjoy seeing people point and look and smile at something I did with a sculpture. Having objects, humorous objects, doing every day things seem to bring a lot of joy to people who see them. Oddly, through the death of my father came a series I call Home-Bodies. My father had bird houses in his front yard and back yard, always bird houses and feeders. Throughout the year, even winter I remember my Father feeding them in the Chicago area. Birdhouse tiny acts of kindness for helpless creatures – in my mind. I started making wax sculptures of birdhouses shortly after my fatherÈs death.At the same time, I was thinking about figurative representations, and all of a sudden the simple little birdhouses of my fatherÈs, and the figurative representations come together in Home-Bodies. First, I took attributes of three of my friends, combined them with some of the birdhouses, and formed them into Personalized Home-Bodies of my friends. It warmed my heart to see the little houses like my fatherÈs combined with thoughts of my friends. More and more, I’ve been taking what we all do, and all did as children, and incorporating the activities with little birdhouses to make Home-Bodies. Everyone that sees them smiles. Feel I am again doing a decentÈ job and love what I do.
