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As an artist, I have difficulty with straight lines.

 

If I have to create a straight line, I vastly prefer a hand-drawn line that approximates “straight”. No rulers for me.

 

My life has been a lot like this too. One big, NON-straight line! Multiple careers, an undergraduate degree that I never used, and a graduate degree that took me over 20 years to use.

 

I played around with sculpting in high school (and loved it), but didn’t sculpt again for 30 years. Here’s a sculpture that I created at age 16:

 

 

Converging Lines

Every so often, life's paths come together and converge. If you're lucky, these convergences make beautiful sense. One of my favorite convergences involved Africa and sculpting.

 

Africa

While living in Minneapolis and newly married, Dave and I both worked for a non-profit organization called Partners in Food Solutions (PFS). The volunteers and partner companies are committed to improving food security, nutrition, and economic development in Africa. Theirs is a mission that reaches across cultural and national boundaries to the essence of being human, and the dignity that caring for fellow humans can evoke. Click the PFS logo to learn more about this amazing organization:

 

 

Dave joined as a volunteer and I was hired as a staff member. We loved it and gave it our all.

 

My position evolved from communication specialist to training manager. This new position utilized the graduate degree I had earned 20 years prior: a master’s degree in cross-cultural communication and training design. I trained volunteers from all over the world and helped to design and implement traditional training programs for food processors in East Africa.

 

Map of the countries of our focus in East Africa

 

I befriended a dynamic, wonderful Kenyan woman: Angela. She also lived in Minneapolis and was a volunteer for PFS. Her beauty inspired me.

 

Art School

Attending a community art school in Minnesota that had a full-service foundry and welding studio (very rare for a community art school), I became a big, fat sponge. I got my hands on all kinds of processes, equipment, and new knowledge.

 

A new project was imminent as two paths in my life began to converge.

 

I have always loved doing portraits, especially of other ethnicities, and so I decided to do a portrait sculpture of Angela. Portraits force me to really “see” my subject - not just their physical appearance, their spirit and energy - for accurate representation in clay.

 

Working with Africans passionate about solving food security issues was both inspiring and humbling. We'd found a great partnership and I wanted to capture it with a sculpture.

 

Representing the dignity that I saw in the African people I was meeting from Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Ethiopia, this project, through many iterations, became “Dignity”. 

 

The original portrait in water-based clay

 

Iterations

It takes a lot of iterations to produce a bronze. For "Dignity", I:

• built a full portrait in water-based clay
• took a mold of the clay
• created a wax version from the mold
• took a partial wax of the mold
• invested it in bronze
• took a mold of the bronze
• scanned the bronze version into a digital file
• printed up a small version of the original portrait, and
• molded that and created small bronze portraits

The result? A portrait of Angela in two bronze sizes: life-size and half-life size.

 

Click image for a video that captures some of the process

 

The convergence of big vectors in my life resulted in a simple, elegant and powerful message about dignity.

 

 

For other stories, visit my website at kerrartworks.com