Cathy Carman – Sculptor’s Diary

 

                     Sculptor touches wood, stone, bronze. His hands can sense the temperature of emotion.
An idea appears under the loving fingers. A thought finds the fountain and the reality takes its shape.

This is a diary of personal emotions. Things that perhaps cannot be expressed in words. They only exist in forms, in figures that stand inside me. Something that can keep me afloat. A diary can be like a life raft - Cathy Carman - My Diary

Cathy Carman – accomplished sculptor from Ireland, exhibited her work in Poland for the first time. Her two exhibitions which take place in Poland, has been called – This is my personal diary.

She studied sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Dublin. Cathy Carman sculpts in bronze, stone, wood and other materials. They are used to give surprising effects, inspiring imagination of viewers.
Her works are exhibited in Ireland as well as the other countries. Monuments and statues made by her, adorn Irish city streets and public institutions. Her exhibitions – cycles: Vessels, Oweynagat, Moon - are formulated according to the rhythm of imagination and metaphors.

Cathy Carman’s exhibitions in Poland highlight duality in her works.
Intriguing, dynamic and expressive sculptures, which we can see on this display have a great deal of energy. Each of them is individual thought, separate page in her diary.
The perfect duet is passing and human fate.







I am full of hope and melancholy. Two opposites. Two powerful emotions. And what I discovered was that in each case there was a twin. With hope there was always despair, with love there was always hate – Cathy writes in her diary



Melancholy – sister of death and silence. The strongest feelings cause extreme emotions.

Writer will trap his words between pages. Sculptor touches wood, metal. Under his omniscient fingers he reads evanescence. Now he needs just time and patience. Material will change into the character or symbol. Then the story will start. Sculptor will open next card in her diary.
Do the opposite have to be hostile, and the passing have to be a death?
Hope pulls out its hands, and melancholy spreads over silver, trembling leaves.


The keynote of the exhibition is a loss and hope. Sculptor was stricken by the death of her brother, but she could experience the fortunate recovery of her partner. Illness of a loved one is harder to bear than our own. We are helpless when our close friends suffer.

Melancholy and joy, sorrow and hope come unexpectedly at us, caused by events in our lives, and they wash over us like an ocean.

Love brings suffering, bestows us and takes all away. It works like a relentless tide. The sea must calm down after the storm. The wind stops, the waves forget about the anger.
The fragility of the human heart, the unpredictability of fate and ubiquitous fortune, remind us that we need to live on our own account – we have to “think”, not just “know”.

I thought that I would like to do something that protects us from the naked waves.

Some people have already left with the wave. What can protect us? Consolation may be found in “a road”, to be on the road and to create.

Figures from the diary carry loads on their backs. They are like blades inbuilt in human body, struggling in pain under their weight. You can feel their endurance, though they will bear only one life.

When the sculpture is formed, material gives in to the hands of the sculptor. He is the only one who knows what thoughts the sculpture hides. He shapes the material according to his ideas, but the matter gives him its own soul.

Wood is warm, bronze is cold.
Disappointment, longing, the style of the era filtered by the imagination of the artist.

The artist explores and creates from his own experience, if he is honest - the truth will appear. Slavish frames of commitments can be beaten only by the imagination.



This rush of the emotions is like the sea. I am flooded, I experience feelings like waves - from Cathy Carman Diary

Sculptures are orphans without their creator. Only the sculptor knows how to combine them, how to make them play with our imagination, to make our hearts understand the answer.
This is our contact zone - the viewer and the creator.

Perfect point of intersection of your fate, longing and expectations.

The surface of the calm seas is deceiving us. The death is waiting for the man when the storm arrives. But the man will not die, even the ocean will not take him, because human life is elusive to the ocean.

Between the wave and the shore there is no explanation, between waves there is no sympathy.
Ocean takes, calms down, his silence soothes.

The wind does not let to sleep. The waves affect the heart, fill the sculptor’s head with the noise and world. It is not enough to remember, it flows in our veins.
Everything truly happens.
Love, breakup, you only need a heart for this game.

I try to maintain a dreamlike unconscious state as I make the work. I’m not a man! It’s myself I’m living with - from Cathy Carman Diary

Every artist is looking for his own truth, the way and the vision of the world.
If he has a bit of luck, he will come out from this puzzle, clean like a butterfly.

Sculptures coexist in space. Where is the beginning, the touch, the idea, the sketch? Then you can reconstruct everything from human gestures and hearts, you can look at the shadows, the true spirits of this world.
Body - excellent sculpture.

Each sculpture is a new me, a new life. It can be done. Planets can be rearranged. To be a creator and suddenly to realize that there is no one here, that you have to face loneliness.

When the sculpture is ready, Time no longer exists.
It is waiting for the next Wheel.

Three Cathy Carman's exhibitions in Warsaw:


1. Centre for the Promotion of Culture Prague South 
    5-26 March 2015

2. Gallery of Contemporary Art at the Ad-Hoc Arsus Cultural Center
    4 - 27 April, 2015

3. Public Library, Warsaw, ul. Czerniakowska 178a 

    Biblioteka Publiczna dla dzielnicy Śródmieście
    April 28th – 12th May 2015





Cathy Carman - Sculptor

Like the winter

Be in front of all parting, as though it were already
behind you, like the winter just gone by.
Because among winters is one so endlessly winter
only by over-wintering does your heart still survive.

Be always dead in Eurydice – climb, with more singing,
climb with praising, back to the pure relation.
Here, in the failing place, in the exhausted realm,
be a sounding glass that shattered as it rang.

Be – and know at that time the state of non-being,
the infinite ground of our deepest vibration,
so that you may wholly complete it this one time.

In both the used-up, and the hollow and dumb
recourse of all nature, the un-tellable sum,
joyfully count yourself one, and destroy the number.

The Sonnets to Orpheus
Rainer Maria Rilke

True Love

 







True Love by Wislawa Szymborska

 True love. Is it normal
 is it serious, is it practical?
 What does the world get from two people
 who exist in a world of their own?

 Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
 drawn randomly from millions but convinced
 it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
 For nothing.
 The light descends from nowhere.
 Why on these two and not on others?
 Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
 Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
 and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

 Look at the happy couple.
 Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
 fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
 Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
 The language they use - deceptively clear.
 And their little celebrations, rituals,
 the elaborate mutual routines -
 it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!

 It's hard even to guess how far things might go
 if people start to follow their example.
 What could religion and poetry count on?
 What would be remembered? What renounced?
 Who'd want to stay within bounds?

 True love. Is it really necessary?
 Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
 like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
 Perfectly good children are born without its help.
 It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
 it comes along so rarely.

 Let the people who never find true love
 keep saying that there's no such thing.

 Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.



Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Freedom exists inside us

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) is recognized as a one of the greatest Polish theatre artists in the world. He is known for his stunning visual performances – Wielopole, Wielopole, Today is my Birthday, I shall never return.

In June 1986 Tadeusz Kantor taught group of eleven students at the Civica Scuola d’Arte Drammatica in Milano. The Milano Lessons were intimate commentaries.

The highest freedom

that is demanded by

A r t

will not be understood

Freedom in art

Is a gift neither from the politicians

Nor from the authorities.

Freedom exists inside us.

We have to fight for freedom

within ourselves

in our most intimate interior

in our solitude

in our suffering

It is the most delicate domain,

the domain of soul and spirit.

Kantor pointed out in the Milano Lessons:

The Space of Life and everything that is contained in this phrase.

Exists parallel to

This other space,

The space of art

The two of them converge, overlap

And coalesce

Sharing their Fate and Destiny.

Sources:

A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944-1990

Photo: Anna Halczak / Kantor in Milan 1988, ze strony - http://en.poland.gov.pl

Still friend of many distances

Rilke – Sonet to Orpheus XXIX

Still friend of many distances, feel how

your breath increases space even now.

In the timber-frames of shadowy bell towers

let yourself ring. That which saps your powers

grows ever stronger from this sustenance.

Through transformation, cross the borderline.

What's your most sorrowful experience?

If drinking you is bitter, turn to wine.

Be, in this night of extravagances,

magics at the crossroads of your senses,

the sense they oddly all cohere.

And when the world no longer knows

you, to the still earth say: I flow.

To the rushing water speak: I'm here.

Single Color

My hands were too soft.. I had to find some special occupation, some kind of work that would not force me to turn away from the sky and the stars, that would allow me to discover the meaning of life.

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

Marc Chagall

Sailing to an Island

The boom above my knees lifts, and the boat 
Drops, and the surge departs, departs, my cheek
Kissed and rejected, kissed, as the gaff sways
A tangent, cuts the infinite sky to red
Maps, and the mast draws eight and eight across
Measureless blue, the boatmen sing or sleep.

Sailing to an Island - Richard Murphy - fragment

Clouds over Europe - part 1

Clouds are always with us although they never belong to us.

    Clouds over Normandy

  

    Clouds over Spain

Clouds by Wisława Szymborska.

I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds -
a split second’s enough
for them to start being something else.
Their trademark:
they don’t repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

Clouds over Spain

Unburdened by memory of any kind,
they float easily over the facts.
What on earth could they bear witness to?
They scatter whenever something happens.

   Clouds over Madrid

Compared to clouds,

life rests on solid ground,

practically permanent, almost eternal.

    Clouds over Lisbon

Next to clouds
even a stone seems like a brother,
someone you can trust,
while they’re just distant, flighty cousins.

    Clouds over Portugal

Let people exist if they want,
and then die, one after another:
clouds simply don't care
what they're up to down there.

    Clouds over Sevilla

And so their haughty fleet
cruises smoothly over your whole life
and mine, still incomplete.

   Clouds over Barcelona

   Clouds over Chamonix

They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone.
They don't have to be seen while sailing on. 

                                                            Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

    Clouds over Alps

Love more important than death

It is unusual book, poignant, deeply touching and beautiful. Beautiful because love is beautiful always. Love is even more important than life.

 in Polish

In the midst of the horror, people found moments of happiness said about it, in his book Marek Edelman, doctor and military commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Edelman’s book I byla milosc w getcie (And There Was Love in the Ghetto) - In 150 pages, Edelman explores ghetto memories which differ from the mass deportations, massacres and starvation. Survive together or perish together – it was important.

Marek Edelman about love in the ghetto - English

And the next story about Estusia (excerpt from the book)

That was probably after the second Action - Akcja in January. I don't remember how it was that I happened to be on Wronia Street. I entered the attic, and on the floor, on mattresses, people were lying everywhere. There I saw Estusia. She was lying on a mattress. A man was serving her tea or hot water. I tell her: "Madam, there is a flat for you on the Aryan side. You have a lot of money, you can get away." Then it was supposed to be a way to survive. "You have enough to keep you there until the end of the war." She almost did not reply. She just said: "No, I'll stay with him. Either we will survive together somehow, or we will perish together. I've never been so happily in love like those four years. That is why I did not look for you." "Mrs. Estusia, you do not have a chance here," I pleaded. I don't remember her answer, but she said something like: "My chance was those four years, and I used it."

There was the love in the ghetto - English
A fragment of the film ( director - Jolanta Dylewska) it is not a film about the Holocaust, but a film about love, the most important human emotion

Mountain Butterfly

It is more than just a place. Mountains were in my every child’s holiday.
Mountain hostels and shelters with a golden light in the windows. The best hope in the evening after long hard trip.
Hot tea with a lemon – which probably can never taste better, gives a new power always.
Bustle and noise in the hostel full of excited travellers – rain outside.
Spruces proudly growing into the sky, straight and high.
Breath of the Tatra forest with green plants and smelling pines.

And the only one sound of entrance door opening, in the evening.
Thanks Be to God they have returned, our friends that were climbing that day.
More mystery than story.
Memories about all people that loved the same Tatra before my time – the same rain, rocks, gullies, dangerous storms.
When I was sitting Roztoka hostel (built in 1876) – perfect shelter for climbers. Sitting, drinking tea and looking through the window.
Outside the window was my life – first time I was here with my mother when I was 13 maybe. Later I was here many times with my friends, my husband, my daughter and sometimes I am here alone with myself only.
Not far from here is a Roztoka Valley, one of the most beautiful in the Tatras.
Is it the best place to think about order in my life?
Easier to think, easier to agree with ourselves.
Confession? - yes.
One September I found a butterfly in the valley. His wings were broken. I put him on the leaf. I didn’t know if his life was ended?
He was born merely that morning. Butterflies live so short.

If I could only turn back the clock.

Sunsets

Zachody słońca, nostalgia przemijania .. Sunsets, nostalgia of passing ..

Kto pogubił te pióra różowe na niebie?

Aniołowie kochania, kochania, kochania. -

Popłynęli daleko - nie do mnie i ciebie,

lecz tam, gdzie szyby płoną snem oczekiwania.

Who has lost these pink feathers in the sky?

Angels of Love.. Love .. Love

They flown far away – not to me and you

But where windows burn with dreams of waiting

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska

Fair is the sun when first he flames above,

Flinging his joy down in a happy beam;

And happy he who can salute with love

The sunset far more glorious than a dream.

Rzucając nam dzień dobry! Jak wybuch z ciemności

Szczęśliwy ten, kto może pozdrowić w miłości

Swój zachód promienniejszy nawet od marzenia.

Charles Baudelaire

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours

which it passes to a row of ancient trees.

You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing

that turns to a star each night and climbs 

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)

your own life, timid and standing high and growing,

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star

Rainer Maria Rilke