A friend and fellow artist once shared a conversation he’d had that many of us are also familiar with. A collector asked him, “So, how do you know when a piece is finished?” His answer? “It’s finished when you buy it… because then I can’t mess with it anymore.” I don’t know if everyone does this, but we certainly have.

Often, when we’re working through a piece, a large part of the process is eliminating creative paths that we could take, but don’t, to ultimately end up with what is hopefully the most complete expression of our vision. A part of us is then always left to wonder: what if I’d done the other idea instead? Or, as time progresses, our vision, skills, knowledge, research, interests and curiosities develop and shift. Maybe we revisit a piece, change a few things, rework some areas – hopefully, to the improvement of the work.

Bronze and fired clay sculptures shift and evolve over time through environmental impacts, but here I’m thinking about intentional modifications based on creative decisions made by the artist. With many of his bronze sculptures, Colin offers various options in an edition, so that each one is unique. This allows him to wander down many of the creative paths he initially was inspired to follow, but couldn’t if there were only one. With his original 24” version of  “Wind in the Waves,” he creates a distinct patina for each one in the edition, allowing him the freedom to explore how different coloration impacts the feeling of the work.

Colin added even more options when he enlarged “Wind in the Waves” to 3/4 life. Birds are a central part of the original story he wrote that inspired the sculpture. In this larger version, collectors can not only choose the patina color, but also the number and placement of the Gannet and tropic birds flying around the central figure as seen below in the first two sculptures in the edition.

“The Twins Kythos: Dusk” has even more possibilities. In addition a unique patina, there are six different fabrics that can flow off the hip and and shoulder. There are six aulos pipes as well – a fox, nightingale (also called nightjar or nighthawk), moonflower, calla lily, ornamental pipe and one in the shape of Amorgos – a central character in the mythology Colin is writing. The math whizzes among us will quickly note that there are then thousands of potential variations – of which, due to the small edition size, only a tiny fraction will ever be created. Collectors are welcome to take part in selecting the elements that please them the most.

Beyond these options that have been planned at the time of sculpting the piece, it is also interesting to look through the sculptural progression on one of my earlier life-sized ceramic pieces. She was originally conceived as a partner piece to “Commodity,” my first graffiti sculpture.

Much of my work outside of Imaginative Realism deals with women’s experiences and the power that words have to define and shape the realities we live in. “Commodity” is about human trafficking and child marriages. In this sculpture, I used the graffiti to represent the vandalization of a young girl’s life – using women as a societal commodity as payment for debts or a source of income rather than independent human beings with the right to self-determination. “Commodity” is graffitied with words such as property, goods and chattels in fourteen languages representing the countries with the highest incidence rates as well as the world-wide occurrence of these phenomena.

“Commodity” even got to do a stint gracing the streets of New York City.

Contrasting the issues facing young girls in other cultures presented in “Commodity,” the companion piece was “But I Wanted an iPhone,” sculpted at the same time using the same model.This one was inspired by a conversation with a young person (quite a long time ago, given that flip phones were still a thing and iPhones were a bit of a luxury item). She was notably distressed at having received a flip phone for Christmas instead of the more desired iPhone. This sculpture represents the mental conditioning developed in a society preoccupied with the acquisition of consumer goods. She is finished with tattoo imagery indicating some of the most effective and controversial consumer marketing slogans and campaigns targeting women and young people including “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,” “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins,” and “Bright Young Things” among others.

She participated in several shows and lived this way for a number of years. Her next incarnation happened when I reworked her for a show called “Visual Voices: Truth Narratives” at the NCECA Annual Exhibition (National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts) in Pittsburgh. The imagery on “Crying Out Loud: Seeing Red, Feeling Blue” relates to climate change, pollution, conservation, censorship, intolerance, inequality, freedom of speech and more challenges facing societies. She garnered a fair bit of attention at the show and has been sitting quietly at our studio for many years.

She was recently reinvented yet again this summer in a graffiti theme, similar to her sister piece, for a Summer Salon in Santa Fe.

“The Fragility of the Mind” calls attention to the many mental health challenges facing people around the world in these complicated times – from depression and anxiety to harmful self talk and darker notions. The figure, in obvious distress, is covered with graffitied epithets and phrases that represent harmful labels and name calling, which might be expressed by others as well as comments towards a person’s own self. In this presentation, words such as “not good enough,” “invisible,” “I don’t matter,” “broken,” “better off without me” and “unlovable” are scrawled over the entire figure, symbolizing the vandalization of one’s soul and spirit by the downward spiral of stressors, causality and mental health struggles.

I chose to leave some portions of the previous imagery that worked with the new theme. For me, the partial face visible on the sculpture’s right thigh symbolizes the idea that when we truly empathize with another’s struggles, we often see a bit of ourselves in their challenges, bringing forth our compassion.

In contrast with this challenging messaging, hidden on the underside the sculpture, are words of positivity and optimism, representing the thought that in the darkest of times, even when it’s difficult to see, there is always hope and the potential that things will get better, adding another layer to the concept.

With the evolution of this sculpture, I don’t know that I necessarily feel that any one incarnation is “better” than any other. They all speak to the particular conversations I was having at the time. I find it intriguing to see the evolution of concept and thought process on the same “canvas” over time. Will this be her last incarnation? I don’t know. Right now, I find the graffiti enormously engaging to look at. But, whether she is reinvented again probably depends on if she finds a new home that preserves her as she is in her current state before my mind wanders down the next path of curiosity.