So Nice I Made it Twice

 In 2018, I posted about Isola.  I bring it up because I want to make a point about something.

And that something has to do with love and value.  "Isola" is unsold, meaning no one asked me to fix her. 

While I did successfully get money for repairing the damage from the shipping company, I could have pocketed the money and not done the repair.  Of course, if I fix it, it can be for sale again. But to some, she's damaged goods. Which strikes me as a shame.

Do we call humans who have suffered "damaged goods"...well, sometimes!  But judge not lest ye be judged.  We are ALL damaged goods!

To me, Isola is priceless and always will be.  And the fact that she was damaged does not decrease her value, but INCREASE it.  Why? Because I think when an artist loves something enough to fix it, it means something.  She is more loveable because she has suffered.

Have you read Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges?  The story of told in the form of a book review.  Pierre Menard is an author who has rewritten Cervantes' Don Quixote word for word.  An exact duplicate.  But the reviewer makes the case that Menard's text is actually better than the original.  Why? Because Menard's method was to labor intensely over every single word in the book and to ultimately decide in favor of using it. Funny, right?  Totally. But it speaks to why redoing the parts of Isola exactly as they were done originally means more than doing them the first time.

New parts cut out

New parts in progress

New parts for figure complete placed next to broken ones for comparison

New parts complete (so far)

 

 

Some other thoughts:

She is one of increasingly few figurative works by me. I do not think I will ever outdo her face.  Maybe equal it, but just look at her!  Am I bragging?  I don't think so--I feel I am incapable of having done this myself--I was channeling a higher power for sure.  They get the credit.  And while I can re-make her, I cannot conceive of her again, if I ever did in the first place. She was an accident, after all. 

Her face is the essence of serenity and acceptance. Her posture, the essence of inscendence, interiority, integrity and unity.  Her situation, the essence of, well, what it must be like to be on a tiny island of beauty and danger.  Maybe you see none of this, it matters little. I am sure you see something.