Geoffrey Gorman, sculptor

In the Fall of 2005, I had the pleasure of attending an opening at the Hahn Ross Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe.  There I was greeted by a sculptural menagerie of stick animals accompanied by stick people.  The forms, made of locally gathered twigs, expressed great humor and pathos and made me curious about the artist.  Gorman's musings on the idea of found toy relics from prehistoric times inspire much of his work and are elegantly manifested in these delightful figures.

One of his large bird sculptures was particularly compelling to me.  It was full of ambiguities.  It captured the essence of bird and nest in one simplified, transparent animal form.  The bird had substance while being light and open.  Brown wooden twigs kept their brittle qualities as their ends took on a feather-like quality.  Despite a feeling of age and wisdom, enhanced by the rusty wires wrapped around the beak and legs, the bird’s beak was strong and scary.  There was a smooth river stone sitting in the bird’s center that I was certain represented an egg ready to hatch.  Geoffrey explained that this was just a stone he placed in the belly cavity and he thought the bird was male.  We laughed at all the ambiguities of the piece.  I really enjoyed these personality-filled sculptures and wanted to capture their creation in a pictorial form.  Photographing Geoffrey as he brought them to life in his studio was a treat.