Sculpture cannot be taught by books or the spoken word; it must be experienced by the artist. Art is a command. The hands must be trained by practice, the mind by constant acquisition of knowledge, and the heart by its undefeated faith and desire to overcome all obstacles. For sculpture is a thorny road beset by barriers, defeats, and disappointments.

Art is, however, made of the stuff that dreams are made of, and they say the dreamer is a favorite of the gods. To him they whisper their secrets, to him the moon reveals her innermost beauty, and the night will enfold him to her heart and guard him with her strong dark wings.

The poet and the artist must be ready to harness Pegasus to pull a heavy load. Labor and fatigue are the inevitable price of accomplishment, for no great creation is easily conceived or expressed. Art has been called the Holy Land where the initiates seek to reveal the spirituality of matter.

For grownups as well as for children the intelligent study of art can be of great benefit. Psychologists and physicians agree that manual labor helps to readjust the mind to a balanced rhythm. The training of the hands to respond deftly to the mind is a distinct and joyful experience. When the skill of an artist becomes that of an expert, the creator may sense a sort of ecstasy in the actual accomplishment of a difficult task.

Even though we generally fall far short of our aim, we still are impelled by this ever-flowing stream of hope and desire to try again to surpass ourselves. Failures are many and often devastating to our morale, but one or two bull's-eye successes will carry us over months of hard labor. No composer would attempt to write a musical composition until he had studied the theory and technique of his art, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. No sculptor can hope to create a work of art without the equipment of 2 thorough knowledge of his craft.

A real artist cannot be encouraged or discouraged. He will overcome all obstacles to gain his objective. He will be his own severest critic and come up from any beating with renewed faith and determination. He will not wait for inspiration: he will search passionately and work ceaselessly, finding his inspiration reborn in every problem that he tackles.

When someone asks me cheerfully if I think they could "take it up" as a pastime, I generally suggest social service as a less severe occupation or travel. The idea of what sculpture really entails comes as a complete blow to most people. Their curiosity has led them to ask, "How do you make a bronze?" and as the answer is a long and complicated one, they generally change the subject before they are obliged to concentrate too painfully. Sometimes they ask if their talented child should go to Paris to study, or if art could be learned in America. A typical case would be the following:

"My girl is eighteen, just out of school, doesn't like parties, has done a great deal of modeling and drawing, has never studied with any teacher, intends to devote all her time to art. We think she is very talented, what can you suggest?"

SCULPTOR: "Bring me what your child has done and let me see everything, drawings, models, sketches, and above all let me observe and question the student alone."

STUDENT: "Oh, I've only modeled one head, and these drawings are from casts, these others are portraits of my friends; of course they are just sketches."

SCULPTOR: "Is this all you have done?"

STUDENT: "Yes, and I've never taken any lessons from anybody; I want to go to Paris. Please tell my father I should be sent over there."

SCULPTOR: "Do you wish to amuse yourself in art, or learn what it really means?"

STUDENT: "Oh, I want to draw and model and keep my mind busy. I want to do something."

SCULPTOR: "I wonder if you can understand what I mean if I quote you four lines of a poem which I think sums up a work of art in sculpture, just as well as it describes the essence of a poem.

If the student shows an intelligent reaction, there is hope, if not . . . well, there are many other roads that could be suggested, rather than encouraging her to attempt sculpture.

In most cases the ideal plan to challenge a young hopeful (and they are legion) would be to send him or her to a practical school of technical training (if one exists) where the pupils are taught how to drive a nail straight or saw a plank, miter a few corners, and plane the surface of rough wood until the hands become used to holding and directing tools. After this introduction they should be taught how to bend and twist wires. They should learn to cut pipes with metal saws, fit them together, and attach lead pipe into sufficient armatures to hold clay in place. Let the pupil build up an idea in clay and learn how to cast it in plaster. The student will soon show ability or lack of it, tenacity of purpose or lack of sincerity and interest. All this may seem unnecessary to the beginner, but it is not! These first low jumps are just tryouts.

A student often feels that after a certain period of study he will suddenly become an artist, whereas if he is really an artist both at heart and in his spirit, he knows that he will never reach his ideal and that he will remain a humble student to the end of his days. The mirage of beauty leads him forward along lonely and exhausting roads, and at the end of each journey he knows that the mirage is no nearer, only the light has broken through more vividly and his faith is stronger than ever, that the struggle is worth while, and that no passionate effort is ever wasted.

The artist records the spiritual history of his time His work lives on to tell the future the inner workings of man's conscious and subconscious mind; be it realistic or abstract, nonobjective or cubistic, it is still a record of evolution or revolution, a soaring of wings or a slipping downward, and this responsibility must be accepted and revered.

New ideas and new methods may all be very well, but the old idea of learning your job thoroughly has never been improved upon. "Whatever may change, Art remains what it was two thousand years ago, and two thousand years hence it will be in all its principles and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just the same" (RUSKIN).

Transitions of approach to an old subject are always difficult and slow in process. But America is certainly facing the fact that the twentieth century demands a new outlook on the problems of training the young, housing them, and understanding them.

There have been many constructive experiments tried out in the field of the arts, and every year these battlefields of opinions and criticisms find the necessity to change and readjust themselves to the demands of the day. The faculty endeavors to find the best way for the students, while the students inevitably decide that the methods are wrong and that they could all evolve something better. The only slip is: Do they? A good deal of time is spent in finding fault rather than actually suggesting constructive improvements.

Surely the amount of time and money spent in art education is enormous. Think of the installation and work involved at Cranbrook, near Detroit, where leaders in architecture, sculpture, painting, weaving, and other arts and crafts spend their lives directing and inspiring those who are lucky enough to absorb and profit by their experience.

Bennington College is another teeming, active center of art methods. The Tyler School of Fine Arts, connected with Temple University, in Philadelphia, reveals what can be done to train the art student, not only in the theory, but in every practical working phase of the arts and crafts. There the student must model, draw, and carve his way through the first years of learning. The painter must grind his own colors and prepare his own canvases. The sculptor must cast his own plaster, and carve his wood and stone; then he learns the processes of bronze casting, both by sand and by lost wax methods, the chasing and patining of his finished work. As wisely stated by the Director, Mr. Boris Blai: "Experience is knowledge. To accept the opinion of others without personal awareness is ignorance, waste, and imitation."

This practical demonstration method is certainly the best and should be the one to be encouraged throughout the land. The days of guilds and apprentices are over, but the need is still here for expert craftsmen who take pride and pleasure in doing their work superlatively well.
The public should realize that nothing would contribute more to the beauty and culture of their country than to aid in the development of a teaching center of this type. Art need no longer be thought of as a specialized study, mysteriously disguised by all the "isms" and "ists" as a means
of spending time harmlessly. It is time to awake and demand the right sort of training. Whether it be a handmade tool or a public monument, it should be given the best that any of us have, to endow it with strength and beauty.

It is gratifying to read in the New York Times of June 28, I 938, that art appreciation is at last considered a basic need, and that art experience is indispensable to the production of a decent society. The article states that college professors have at last become convinced that education should begin with art, for the sake of a balanced, orderly mind, and that the culture received through art will develop the individual, because a true artist is a leader in reconstruction of personal outlooks and ways of living. Dr. Lester Dix, of Lincoln School, Teachers College, went so far as to declare that "art is a great expander and enricher of experience. It rounds out and matures the meanings of experience, and he who has felt this will not willingly go back to a thinner existence."

I have known frequent examples of people who, having suffered a mental upheaval or long illness from nerves, have turned to the serious study of art with extraordinary benefit. Their minds are directed in new channels of thought, they become aware of their hands and eyes as never before, the feeling of actually modeling in clay or carving wood has filled them with a new curiosity and enthusiasm.

Regardless of circumstance or age, we all have need of some sort of creative occupation. It is this deep, fundamental urge to make something tangible that lurks in the background of many a sick mind. The individual may not be aware of what is causing a certain hunger or dissatisfaction with life, but more often than not it is the lack of an outlet for just this creative instinct.

Back in the earliest days of art our primitive ancestors worked out their excess energies and nervous dynamics in hunting and fishing. We city dwellers are so bound up in our canyons of brick and machinery that we ignore many of the normal needs of our human mechanism.

The sincere, thinking artist is automatically something of a psychologist. His materials are nature, man, and the world of the spirit. He must continually try to penetrate into the deeper consciousness of life and sensitize himself to feel and understand the underlying principles of nature and man's behavior. Sculpture can include the formation and direction of personality as well as plastic expression of ideas.

It is certain that when students are young and full of boundless energy, it is difficult to slow them down to a continuous, concentrated study of any one subject. Their minds spring ahead to new ideas, and their curiosity drives them to explore everything superficially rather than profoundly; but it is also true that the young mind assimilates more rapidly when it does study than the adult mind, except in unusual cases. For this reason a would-be artist should begin to draw and observe everything about him at an early age, and if he has the real fire he will do this without urging. In fact, it will generally be such a constant activity that it will interfere with his other school studies. A wise teacher will try to understand his pupil's greatest interest and with sympathetic counsel will help him to divide his time satisfactorily; the young artist will respond to this guidance of understanding with gratitude.

Many well-known sculptors and painters are utterly incapable of teaching others. They can create art, but remain inarticulate about its methods and technique. Sometimes a great sculptor, although unable to express his art coherently in words, may exert such a powerful influence by his own achievements and character that the pupils derive great benefit from visits to his studio, and the feeling that perhaps some day they may be able to create something that will bring them a word of approval from the master whom they admire as a personality and respect as an artist.

If they study their technical problems with another teacher, and train their hands to obey their minds, they may profit incalculably from an occasional visit and talk with their inarticulate master; but alas, many pupils rely too much on just the glamour of such association, and neglect the more arduous task of studying anatomy, drawing, and the endless challenges of modeling from life. Sooner or later the moment will come when they will have to learn the rules of the game, and the sooner they find this out the better for them and for their art.

There are many brilliant teachers who have the rare gift of guiding and leading others to their distant goal. But there are also, unfortunately, many less gifted who pass on only what they have read in books rather than what they have themselves experienced. It is discouraging to think of the thousands of hours spent by pupils diligently trying to follow mistaken methods of teaching art. After years of effort, they realize they are not progressing or improving; they grow stale and keep repeating their mistakes. If the light breaks through by itself, or if some honest and able critic tells them they are on the wrong track, they should throw off all their habits of error, go to a different teacher and environment, and lose no time in starting all over from the beginning.

This means learning to draw, not to sketch cleverly or make pretty pictures that will be admired. It means drawing from nude models and redrawing these models from memory, not only copying what the eye sees, but expressing the line of motion and masses of forms and direction of Study the main structure of the body, and familiarize the eye with different sizes and scales of drawings; shift the position from which the model is seen so that the pose becomes an all around composition, not only a one view design; squat on the floor and look up from below the whole impression is new and a fresh set of problems present themselves; climb up on a ladder and draw from above.

Imagine what we all look like to our dogs! The effect of foreshortening must be alarming. By the way, how many of us know that dogs color, only shades of black, gray, and white ~ Think of making a drawing of a dinner party from Fido's point of view. But why not?

I recall how frequently Rodin would suggest lighting a candle and walking around some beautiful Greek or Egyptian marble. The continuous, flowing forms could stand this "acid test," but a piece of mediocre sculpture would fall to pieces and show up all its sharp defects of construction and the relative values of light by and shade, so beautifully balanced and understood by the great old masters.

"Do not be afraid of realism," Rodin often said to me. "To understand nature is a lifelong study. "You must add yourself to what you see and infuse the object with the passionate essence of your own thought. Then the result will be not merely realistic, but it will be the merging of the spirit. The majesty of the mountain will be transmuted by the inner vision, and its beauty distilled and vitalized. To arrive at these heights, however the artist must go apart and fight alone. He must needs create his own isolation and resist all the innumerable interruptions and distractions of a life.

The artist must learn the difference between the appearance of an and the interpretation of this object through his medium Imitation is done by photography, but to infuse reality with life and startle the observer into a new state of consciousness is to create something of one's own. There must be a spark before we can make a fire, and before art is born the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation. Early training is of the utmost importance. The familiar slogan "(Catch them when they're young, " is applicable to many human practices; it has special significance when applied to art students religious training and the taming of wild animals.
A great advantage is gained if the instincts of men and animals can be studied and directed by understanding the individual, rather than by Traditional methods, which often restrain the natural impulses and cramp the imagination. For no two children are any more alike than any two animals. Even twins born within a few moments of each other and nursed under identical conditions develop widely divergent personalities.

In recent years a great deal has been done, in the educational field, to own habits and theories of group teaching. The child is being considered an individual, rather than as a mere number in a class. Great strides have been made in encouraging the child to do original work, which develops the imagination and forces the child to observe or invent mental pictures rather than to commit to memory other people's ideas. Their fancy and instinct to create respond to this system with alacrity and enthusiasm.

The training of a young pupil's mind towards a comprehensive understanding of art should include the exercise of concentration, the development of accuracy of observation, and the drawing from memory of visual impressions. The student should be stimulated to do just a little more and better work than is ever expected of him, to make his aim exceed his grasp, to surprise his teacher and himself a little by occasionally doing extra outside work. This constitutes a link of interest and understanding between the pupil and the teacher, a sort of after hour companionship that can develop into a very useful influence. He should be made aware at an early stage of the actual brotherhood of man; an open-minded conception of racial types, with their varying qualities and characteristics, should be instilled into his mind. So often students think that drawing continually from a nude model is a sufficient experience. The whole world of animals, plants, nature and all organic forms, as well as different races of man, everything in an ever-enlarging world holds a new challenge to the artist to understand its own particular character, anatomy, and psychology.

The artist should have tolerance, patience, and broad-mindedness, with an understanding of the eternal values and quality of thought rather than of words and facts, which so often belie the intention behind them. He should respond to the spiritual source of inspiration and reverence the eternal mysteries of life and death, constantly studying the correlation between the principles, which form the basis of life and the arts.

The artist should prepare himself consciously and sub consciously for an emergency need. He can never know what sudden demand may be made of him from any unexpected angle. He must be ready in his study to construct and interpret a human being, an animal, a tree, a fitting design for some architectural facade or lunette or fountain for a garden, a tombstone or a symbolic monument to commemorate a great deed of heroism.

The Artist's interest should be stimulated in the study of great masters of the past, not only in their achievement but essentially to understand why these masters were great. Read the record of their lives, whereby it may be discovered that their qualities of greatness were based upon respect for truth, self-sacrifice to an ideal, and indefatigable courage and patience to carry out an inner vision, a secret hope to reveal a glimpse of eternity.

Sculpture Inside and Out