This sculpture was commissioned to commemorate my friend’s 70th birthday. When she came over to see “Because You Asked” she was drawn to how (for the first time) I did not carve every surface of the rock, but left stone uncarved.
I started carving this stone at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although many artists had amazing creative spurts, I found myself a bit paralyzed. Thus, again it was slow going for me and I missed the big birthday date. It was finished “during the year” of the birthday though and she was very kind and patient about it.
Canoeing is one of the many things we have shared together in our friendship. One of the reasons she was attracted to this stone was that one side comes together like a boat’s bow. We were on the same wavelength thinking “boat” and “water” during the carving process.
A boat being yar means it responds well to the sailor’s handling. (It can be spelled as yar or yare but it is pronounced yar.) The name “My, She Is Yar” is a nod to Philadelphia Story staring Katherine Hepburn. Candace came up with the phrase and I clearly remembered “My, she was yar!” in a movie I have not seen for a long long time. At this turning point my friend is recently retired, starting a new decade, starting new activities so I wanted the title to be forward thinking so we changed “was yar” to “is yar”.
The surface of the alabaster stone that she selected had some beautiful texture so I challenged myself through this sculpture to leave even more surface “raw”. When you decide to not carve some parts of the piece, there is some control relinquished. If you shape an edge, it is changed and you can’t take it back and return it to raw. There was a lot of “looking and deciding” before taking each step. A piece like “Life Is But A Dream” was fully mapped out with a clay model but this was not the case here.
| Completed: | 2021 |
| Dimensions: | 13″ x 10″ x 8″ |
| Materials: | Alabaster (obtained from a vendor in Utah) |
| Collection: | Candace Weber, Madison, WI |
