I was thinking today about a visiting artist Italo Scanga, he came to my studio when I was at the Core Program , affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He was such a large robust energetic man, very Italian, with a certain sensitivity. He talked to me in my studio offering some insight about my work. The thing he said that had a real impact on me, even now ,all these years later. He talked about how the male energy in the world forms the structure of things, the female energy is everything else, the breath, the dust , the stuff of the universe . I found that comment immeasurably helpful, I cannot really explain why or how , but thank you Mr Scanga and all the amazing artists that came to visit my studio and offer their perspective.
I think often of the Artist who visited me early on when I was at RISD, she was Haitian, married to a well know Haitian artist ,who worked in Giacometti's studio for a time in Paris. I wrote to her for a while and lost touch, Nicole Turnier Dorceley , she lived in Petion -Ville . With all the turmoil in Haiti where she lived with the earthquake some time ago I think of her and wonder if she is still around. We had Roni Horn as a visiting sculpture critic, Lynda Benglis and so many more when I was at RISD. At Trent Polytechnic I remember Gerard Scarfe and William Wegman doing lectures, not visiting us individually. Anyway it made for a lively counter to working in the studio , to think that what we did, somehow mattered to these visitors.
Looking back through some older sketchbooks lately , found some from when I first arrived in US so 1984, here's a page from then.
