ON A WING AND A PRAYER

2003


Carrara Marble , Italy
0.57m x 0.17m x 0.38m

Private Collection

Model for Large Public Work in Marble

The Story

I was approached by a man who had plans to set up a spiritual centre in South America and wanted to place a large out door sculpture in the grounds of the centre . The only brief I was given was to design a sculpture that was symbolic of  ' spirituality '  in an abstract form ,  The material and size was left to me including the siting and the lighting of the finished work . When a sculptor gets a project like this , creativity can flow , but keeping in mind the budget and not to ' kill it ',  that it can be a reality and the work get sited .  This work never got sited due to reasons out of my control and it would not be fair to the man who was giving me the commission to state it here as to why ........ it could still yet happen .
                                                                    
ON A WING AND A PRAYER ..... as I have said before titles help the viewer to form the thinking and message behind the sculpture even when the sculpture is in abstract form . My title for this work , on hearing or reading it tells you it's dealing with Hope and that's the main message in this work .
A spiritual center embraces all races and religions and that was the idea behind this one so even though I was asked to design an abstract sculpture it's not pure abstract that no body but only the artist can understand it . The sculpture must have some ' spiritual-ness ' about it and be in tune with it's surroundings and purpose ,  in other words , in harmony .
                                                                      
The front and the back of this sculpture do not exist as such for both views depict different messages . In the top photograph and starting from the top , is the ' finger of God '  pointing towards the earth and resting on the Book that's draped with in an ' angles wing ', [ ON A WING } . The book symbolic of all religious books { PRAYER } . When you can picture yourself standing and looking up at the sculpture it all comes into perspective .
                                                                       
When you look at the other photograph the sculpture has no connections in design as to what's going on on the other side , both views hide each other and both views have totally different feelings and messages .  This side the message is the ' Human '  where as the other side it is the ' Spiritual '.  The broken egg form is symbolic of birth and the form around it is the womb . The overall message in the sculpture is easy to see and understand ........ it's a sculpture of Hope for all Human Beings .