There is an interesting process involved in taking one of these large trees down safely. We saved as much as we could for fire wood but the stem intrigued me as a sculptor. I had them cut it square at the butt and we moved a very large section across the road and into the field where I would work on it one day.

Once again I had something very large to play with and had no idea what I was going to do with it.  It sat there while we restored the building and the seasons changed.

One winter, after a very heavy snowfall, I looked across the road and saw what I had been waiting for. The way the show capped the wood it had the look of an oriental warrior in battle mode.  I made drawings immediately to capture the image before the snow melted.  When the weather warmed up I began to cut into the tree.

It turned out to be a rather abstract representation of what I originally saw but it worked for me. Once it was completed I moved in up to a ledge overlooking the property and there it stood for for several years until the bugs got to it.

Rather than let it decay, I took it apart. The tree was planted there 200 years ago and it was returned to the ground.

The next step was to create something like it in marble. That would last forever.

I made this maquette in clay . Then we cut a block of Imperial white out of the quarry in Danby and I carved “Musashi”. He watched over my place in Vermont and has held center stage in the gallery.

                                                     Musashi   Vermont Marble  30″x 14″x 10″

I could write another post about Musashi but if you are interested check out “The Book of the Five Rings ” by Miyamoto Musashi . He was a Warrior, Poet , Artist: the Renaissance man of Japan.

For many years I would throw away my preliminary sketches and quite often I’d trash a drawing after it had been committed to a painting because I figured it had no more value. I was wrong.

When this painting was done I put the drawing aside and lost track of it. I wish now that I had kept it as it had a life of it’s own.

Ecuadorian Girl

Many years ago one of my good friends in Vermont was an artist in her 80’s. I used to love talking to her and one day I mentioned that I had just junked a painting because It wasn’t good enough. She gave me a lecture on the creative process. One of her points was the fact that when we create something it is right and innovative for us at that particular time. For that moment it is an honest statement and should not be discarded. You can look at it a year later with an unbiased eye and then make your decision on whether to keep it or not.

Since then I have tried to follow her advise and there have been many occasions when the piece I though wasn’t good enough turned out to have some merit. If not in itself then as a stepping stone to something new.  Much to my surprise some of my original sketches done years ago turned out to be good enough to be framed.

On the other hand, here is an example of something waiting to happen.

It’s a piece of my pallet that caught my eye while working on another painting. It’s not my style so why have I kept it for several years? For some reason it has stayed pinned to my studio wall so maybe I’ll take a shot at it some day. it’s  worth keeping.

When it comes to our work the test of time allows us to see what we may have missed when we first created the piece. Don’t be in a rush to judge your own work. Put it aside.

Something that may prove the point . Look at some of the rough sketches produced by artists of the 20^th century and check their auction prices.

How many time have you said, “If that were mine I would have junked it.”

When I look back at that work it is easy for me to see the first instances of what I ended up creating in sculpture and today’s paintings. I rarely used a brush. Most of the work was done with heavy oils and a pallet knife. In retrospect I loved texture then as I do now. I liked the “accidents” that happened with color when the paint was smeared with a knife. or my hands, or some tool I found in a hardware store. That part has not changed.

I’ve said before that until the last 15 years I hadn’t done a painting in oil since 1957. I discovered sculpture in 1958 and didn’t paint seriously again for 30 years.

I kept the last 2 paintings. This one and the one of the boys were actually stuck away in a closet and they didn’t get framed until I moved to VA. Both are on canvas and it’s amazing that they never got damaged.

Joe Miron Oil 18"x 29"

. I first met Capt Joe when I stayed at his inn on the beach at Cape Cod in MA. He had a great gimmick. At 3PM he would go out on the deck with a bull horn and yell “ Cocktail spree at 3”. By the time the sound reached the beach it sounded like “ Cocktails FREE at 3” and his bar would get loaded. We became friends over a period of time and he asked me to stop in at his bar in Nassau, Bahamas next time I was on the island.

That turned out to be an “interesting” visit. The Junkanoo Club, then on Bay Street, was something I had never seen before, I was there every night and It was there I met Peanuts Taylor who later became a legend on the island. The band featured Peanuts on the bongo drums. Before I left Peanuts had taught me how to play. Not well.. but enough to have fun with them when I got back to New York .

The Brothers Oil 24"x 48"

This was one of my many photographs taken In the Bahamas. I remember painting it. The bicycle basket and the stone column are literally sculpted in paint. There’s not much I can say about the boys . i never talked to them but I was captured by the younger brothers expression and the way they whole thing came together.

As a photographer I was more of a realist in those days. When I started painting again I realized that I could create realism better with a camera than I could with a paint brush and I moved into abstract, form and color.

I’ve never shown either painting. They are a part of my history.

Rodrigo oil 24"x 30"

When you consider that I cut my teeth in print during the 50’s and 60’s this electronic world is relatively new to me. Although I sometimes come into it kicking and screaming my sons are slowly convincing me that there is a whole world out there that can be reached with the click of a mouse.

Although most of the people who are following my website are within a day trip drive of the gallery the stats are showing me that I have viewers throughout North America, in the UK and Europe.  Yes. I’m surprised. Welcome all.

I have always had collectors across the county but they have found their way to my gallery in Virginia; some by accident for this is an unusual place to have a gallery of this size, and some by intent because they have been collecting my work for years.

What I haven’t paid enough attention to is all of you who are out there who cannot make the trip but who might want to have one of my pieces in your collection.

Enter the internet from stage right.

If you see anything on the site that catches your eye and you would like more information and a larger photo send me an email to  sculpture@edjaffe.com. and we can begin a conversation. Fed EX can and has delivered my work anywhere.

Thank you for following the site.

The search for new material gave me a very good excuse to travel to places that were known for beautiful sea shells. Places like Islamorada in the Florida Keys and Ixtapa on the west coast of Mexico.  I preferred Ixtapa once I figured the place out.

I’m not one for fancy beachfront hotels but there is little choice here. Before they developed this resort the Mexican government did a lot of research . Where were the best beaches on their coast, clean ocean, lot’s of sun and then they went at it with a vengeance. They created a Miami shoreline that was so pristine that there are literally crews out every morning sweeping the beaches. There was not a shell or a piece of seaweed to be seen.. Not good for what I wanted.

I decided to stay at the end of “Miami row” in a hotel that bordered on the undeveloped shoreline. Each morning I would walk along the beach, what there was of it, and collect all kinds of shells. The perfect ones I would bring back to the “Blue hairs” at the hotel so they could have a souvenir of their “exotic trip” to Mexico but I kept all of the broken shells for myself.

This routine was a very relaxing, The ocean was on my left and the beach was only a few yards wide before the land shot up into a cliff. It was me the ocean and the sky. After I had been doing this for several days the word must have gotten out because the manager of the hotel came over to me and told me I had to stay on the hotel grounds.

When I asked him why he told me because it wasn’t safe where I was going.. There were bandits in that area… that’s what he said, ”Bandits”. I thought he was kidding. I continued my walks but now I kept an eye on the cliffs. I guess if any bandits showed up I’d have to give them my shells.

Here’s what I did with them.

Because they were broken they had an interesting combination of beautiful curves and very sharp edges. As a photographer I knew light. I’d set a fragment on a white piece of paper and light it so it showed strong highlights and shadows. I wouldn’t draw the shells but I ‘d draw the highlights and shadows they produced and eventually those drawings would convert into a piece of sculpture.  There was always some character of a shell in the final pieces but mostly they were abstract. The interesting thing about the series was the fact that all of the pieces still had an aquatic look to them due to the source.

Here are two from the series

. Shell Painted cherry wood 18″x 9″x7″

Shell 19 Portuguese Marble 23″x 21″x 13″

For those of you who are new to this site and my work there are 3 of my interviews elsewhere on this site. They should give you all of the history that you need. It all began here.

First time around I was doing advertising photography in NYC.

Big changes have taken place in the past few years. The main one is the fact that I had to stop carving marble. Using power tools for over 30 years brought on a vascular problem in my hands that hurt enough to make me stop. What’s left in inventory is probably the last of it. If I miss anything in my life it’s the noise, dust and physical joy of cutting stone but … I’m on to other things and the creative juices are still flowing.

I’ve been painting on a regular basis and in those paintings I’m constantly looking for ways to get more texture and a three dimensional quality on a two dimensional plane. In the last several months the work has taken a major jump conceptually and I am now creating three dimensional wall sculpture and then using that as a base for a painting. Complicated, challenging and something I think is very new. It takes about a month to do each piece so I’m not ready for a show yet.

If you want a preview you can see where this is going by coming over to my Facebook page. Click the Facebook button at the top of the page .

I flipped around, approached the foreman and asked if I could have a section of the stem. He said, “Sure. How big?” This was a beautiful straight tree and I said, “How about an 8 foot section.”  He mentioned that he could cut it but it would have some serious weight to it so how was I going to move it. I told him to leave it by the side of the road and I would get it out of there as soon as I could make a phone call and return.

A friend of mine was a logger and we drove his logging truck with the crane and rigging down the next day to pick it up. When we got back to Chester we placed it horizontally on a couple of supports to keep it off the ground.

The elm tree in position to be worked on.. someday.

I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what I was gong to put in it but I had a chance to look at it every day when I came out of my house.

I must have been there over a year untouched. At least it was getting a chance to dry out.

One day a friend of mine who was very pregnant came over to visit and when she left I almost said it out .  “That’s it!.. A pregnant woman,

Shortly after I began carving the piece. It was a good summer project and I love working outside.

The piece is well roughed out but far from finished.

I wasn’t able to finish it then because the snows came and in Vermont the snow can be serious. I began again in the spring after “mud season”. When it was done the question was what was I going to do with it. In the end I decided to keep it and I had someone with a backhoe come over .

We moved the "Pregnant Woman" to the high meadow

We moved it up to the high meadow where it could be seen from my kitchen window and where I could drive my tractor around and around it when I cut the high grass in the fields.

When I sold that place and moved to Virginia I left the piece there as it was too big to move.  It may have rotted by now… or she could still be watching over the farm.

Right after we placed her. Later the grass came up and she blended right into the meadow.

I tend to work in bodies of work. In the beginning I do a lot of playing around with sketches, most of which get thrown away, but eventually something catches my attention and the first painting or sculpture in the series gets started. From then on it’s a nice ride because one piece leads naturally into the next without me paying much attention to the process . As the work develops it is constantly changing as it basically remains the same until one day I don’t know what the next piece is going to be. I may make a couple of false starts but they usually get junked. The next piece just isn’t there and the series is over.

I experience the normal let down that comes at the conclusion of any journey but there would be the feeling that the creative juices had dried up. In the days after a completed series I would often sit at the drawing board looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing would happen. I’ve talked to other artists about this and it seems to be an experience that most of us have gone through.

My big change happened when I lived in Vermont.

View from the kitchen window, Chester, Vermont.

On those down days I would take my dog and walk in the woods. In the winter we would go cross country skiing. Some times it would take a few days, sometimes a lot longer but  eventually I would come to see things I had not seen before. I would begin to relax and just feel the peace of the place, I would stop thinking about work.

View from the high meadow lookng back at the house. I have a story about this sculpture coming up.

One day I would begin to sketch without ever realizing when or why the change took place and before long a new body of work would be born. Over time I began to know that down time at the end of a long period of work is normal. I call it the gestation period. It gives my system time to empty and make room for something new. It no longer bothers me. In fact. it’s a rather good time.

Most of the established artist had left Portugal during the revolution in 1974.

When things settled down they already had a life in New York, London and Brazil so they did not come back. On one trip I was even offered a spot in one of Lisbon’s major art galleries if I would move there. That was not going to happen .

During this time the quarries forgot how to export large blocks of marble. Their entire production then was in slicing the stone for floor tiles and siding.

It took me a few months of inquiries before I found a quarry in Borba that was even willing to talk to me about shipping some stone to Vermont. Once we got into a conversation it took another 3 months before they actually had some prepaid stone on the road to Lisbon and then on to Boston.

The blocks on the left are now cut for the sculptors. The mountain in back is considered scrap.

Mega tons of marble that a local sculptor could take at no charge. Most of it is good for carving.

Eventually I was notified that the stone was in a certain container and on a certain ship and was given an ETA. That never happened because the ship was detoured to Rotterdam… don’t ask me why.

One day I got a call from my agent in Boston .

“Hey Ed. I’ve got a bunch of rocks here for you.“

“What do you mean rocks? Weren’t they crated?”

“Nope. Just a bunch of rocks on a pallet with manifest number written on them in magic marker.”

(When stone came in from Carrara it was in crates built so well that they could be used as a doghouse )

I rented a truck and went to Boston to pick the pieces up.

Yep. They were just blocks of marble with numbers written on them, Everyone on the dock had a good laugh about the sophistication of the shipper and they loaded the truck with the heaviest piece closest to the cab to keep everything in balance..  I have to admit that later shipments got better as the quarry become more familiar with the process.

The story didn’t end there. When I got to my place in Vermont  I was able to off load the stone with my crane, except for the large piece near the cab. I couldn’t reach in that far. A couple of beers later I came up with the solution. I backed the truck up to a good sized tree. With a heavy rope I securely tied one end to the stone and the other to the tree. Then I slowly drove the truck away. Once the stone hit the ground the trip was finally over and I had enough to work with for about  a year,.

The majority of the people in Carrara are involved, one way or the other, in getting that beautiful stone quarried or finished and on to market.

I was fascinated with the process. The men who work the quarries have a most exciting and dangerous job.  At least in my mind. To them it’s just something they do.. Today they use diamond saws to cut huge blocks of stone out of the mountain. Some bigger than a SUV. There is a science to it but the same thing was being done in Michelangelo’s time… only then it was harder to do and more men died in the process.

The truckers who moved the stone down the mountain were a special breed of men. There is no room to turn their large trucks so picture this. The road to the quarry is a long zig zag affair creeping up the mountain. In order to traverse the height the driver would drive a certain distance, pull into an off ramp then back the truck up the next leg.  pull into an off ramp go forward again for the next leg and so on. This would go on for miles. They would come down the mountain loaded with mega tons of stone and repeat the process. Just thinking about it scares the hell out of me.

Another thing I found interesting in this town of stone where i met the men of stone was the camaraderie that bound them all together. On the other hand there was an aloofness toward an outsider that exists in any close knit small town. I felt it immediately. Here I was, somewhat lost. Didn’t speak the language well. An obvious outsider …. Until Nicoli introduce me in a tavern where we were having lunch.  Once he told them that I was a stone carver everything changed and I was accepted. In that respect we all spoke the same language.

If any of you are sculpting marble it’s a must trip as soon as you can make it.