physical and emotional

Purple:
My sculpture makes me bleed and turns my skin purple. I use toxic contact cement to laminate layers of cardboard, as much as two gallons in a three-foot piece. The gluing can only be done outside. The use of oil based paints, plastic laminates, shellac, wax, molten metal and chemical patinas challenges the olfactory nerve. Even with filters and air-scrubbers there are fragments everywhere. I wear a face shield to cover my eyes and a dust-mask to cover my nose and mouth but it's never enough. Every day that I work I cut myself with some tool. You will notice more and more red marks in my work. My obsession cuts me and I cut it back. I grow blisters on the palms of my hands from filing, rasping and sanding. Moving hundreds of pounds of bronze from the foundry to the studio to a gallery or museum usually leaves purple reminders of my art. Bruises have become my new patina. Purple tries but it can't defeat me. I am stronger than physical pain.

Blue:
A six-hour drive from the Serengeti in northern Tanzania lies the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. After even on night's camping in the crater you can smell the magic. The crater is not a hole in the ground nor does it look like the ibis in the top of Kilimanjaro, but rather a plane surrounded by an earthbound ring. Time and the elements, over thousands of years, eroded the skin and bones of this once great mountain. This process lowered the walls and expanded the diameter of the crater until only a ring was left. Inside this 300 foot high ring is a National Park 30 kilometers in diameter. The plants and animals trapped inside the fortress exist like no others on earth. Ngorongoro congers up visions of Eden's Garden, Noah's Ark and Dante's Inferno. I always wore a Nikon around my neck, my "back heart". I photographed everything. I was so engrossed in the documentation that I missed the experience. Who among us could forget that it was Sara, the mysterious poet that said, "Blue is a pain of missed opportunities and smoke."

"Why do it?.... I love the results.... When I go I want to take IT with me."

"I'm not sweatin the petty things.
I'm not pettin the sweaty things".

SARA, the poet, March 20 1974