Form is what I see.
I began to sculpt the figure while a student at PCA, now The University
of The Arts. I was excited by the humanity of the “New Realist” artists
which
related to the political and cultural questions that were being asked
at that time, 1960’s and 1970’s.
The figure as art held all the potential of expressing human ideas,
emotions and truths. What started out as an attempt to express the struggle
that was
around me lead me to study with Walter Erlebacher.
I had started art school wanting to design a better car than Ferrari.
I was a teen that loved fast cars and the thrill of racing. Industrial
Design was going to
be my field. I worked for a racing team and traveled as a pit crew
member to Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glenn and most of the road courses
in the
Eastern U.S. While I was in and out of school because of the draft
I lost the will to race and met a wonderful teacher, Charlie Kaprilan.
We talked about
what it was that I loved about cars. Over the months that I worked
with him as an independent student it became clear that sculpted form was
the essential
and primary element that I was drawn to.
I studied with Natalie Charkow, who taught figure modeling and the formal
relationships of the human figure, proportion, mass and volume. She
suggested that I take Walter Erlebacher’s Figure Structure class.
My first meeting with Walter was a passing moment while I was working
on a construction for a methods and materials class in the sculpture workshop
studio. The sculpture that Walter stopped to see was a temple made
of galvanized sheet with a copper roof and doors, and trees made of aluminum
armature wire and steel wool. Inside the structure was a figure made
of black wig hair hanging from wooden rafters. We talked about the mystery
of the
space and the form of the structure. The next fall semester I signed
up for the Figure class which was Walters’ most renowned class. He had
the
reputation at the time as being the toughest professor in the school,
demanding complete knowledge of the subject. The first class started with
cutting
blocks of plastacine into rectangles and making rulers out of cardboard.
It became apparent that the class was going to be more than a study of
the
anatomy of the figure but rather the symphonic composition of the whole
human structure. For the next year we learned not just the lumps and bumps
of
the figure but the real form, movement, structure, morphology, and
shape of each part of the figure making up a whole human. At no time were
we lead to
believe that this was art but rather the knowledge we needed to make
art.
After a successful year of “Figure Structure,” Walter taught a most
important class called “Theories of Structure.” This class revealed to
me a world of
understanding about the way the world works that no other class has.
To explain this class is to simply say that for my whole life I had tried
to beat my
brother ( the smart one) in chess and after this class I won my first
game. The class was about seeing, not the kind of looking that we all do
naturally but
rather finding the patterns and relationships that exist beyond the
surface. The dialog that each class took depended on what he decided
on each day. I
commuted from home at the time and we would ride the same train after
a bowl of soup a Bains Deli on Broad Street. I asked him one day how he
prepared for class, he responded that he decided on what to talk about
on the train. I realized that day that he was far more brilliant than I
had thought.
The next three years of PCA were a joy, there were fights between the
figurative and abstract sides of the sculpture department. I graduated
in the winter
of 1975 and began working at Philadelphia Art Supply. I worked on my
sculptures in my apartment in West Philadelphia and tried to resolve the
things
that I had learned and what I would do next. I made small sculptures
from memory based on what I had learned from Walter. It was around this
time that
he was commissioned to make the statue of Christ Breaking Bread that
is now on the Parkway. He asked me to be one of the models for him and
while I
had never done any modeling I was happy to help in any way. It was
cold in the studio on Church Road, I learned many things from those days,
seeing
him work the clay correcting the form, building the structure. He cast
my feet and hands to have them to work on when I wasn’t there. When the
clay was
finished he asked me to assist with the casting. The mold weighed hundreds
of pounds and one day while we were casting the torso I was holding it
on an
angle for much to long pleading with him to hurry up. When the sculpture
was finished we drove it it the Civic Center and installed it in the center
of the
hall for the Eucharistic Congress. Afterwards we drove it to NY to
the foundry to be cast in bronze. I helped him move many of his sculptures
after that.
Walter had the highest ideals of truth. His art is about form that respects
the reality of the way nature is not about a flawed vision. The perception
of form
can be either the outline or the volume in real space. He once told
me that he didn’t like to draw because there are no edges. The surface
never stops, it is
like a symphonic movement, making the eye embrace the form. Unlike
a life cast in a modeled sculpture the artist can correct the form, finding
ways to
excite the morphology of the figure.
After graduation from college I worked at Philadelphia Art Supply and
at a mold company where I designed hobby ceramics and made block and case
molds. I started my own mold business and designed ceramic doll house
miniatures which were sold by a company in Reading, PA.
In the mid 1980’s I became a single father and concentrated on parenting
until I went back to school and earned my MFA at The Graduate School of
Figurative Art of The New York Academy of Art. While there I was revived
my interest in what had been my first art experience, painting.
For the past ten years I have worked as a carpenter while painting and
sculpting the figure. I have always respected craftsmanship in all that
I do. I learned
this from my father who was an instrument maker, machinist who worked
at the Frankfort Arsenal until his death when I was nine. The first sculpture
I
made was with him, a small wooden boat carved with a Dremel tool.
CHARLES E. HANKIN, sculptor