Adam Schultz sculpts what many term, ‘goddesses’ - large,
ample, luscious feminine forms that are plentiful in body, flesh and curves. I
stumbled upon his art-form last year and fell in love. I reached out to him to
see if he’d be willing to do a Q&A for my blog. I’ll be candid, I tend to
be selfish when it comes to satisfying my own curiosities, but this I pursued with
it in mind to share with my readers. I'm sure you'll appreciate his immense talent as much as I do. Enjoy!
To start this... Your Goddess sculpture truly speaks to the
feminine allure of roundness, curves,
voluptuousness and plus size grace and beauty. Dare I say there is a bit of the
sacred molded into your pieces? Your
mastery is self-evident to a trained eye. With all the wondrous ranges and
possibilities out there, I'm curious...
Q#1 - Are you willing you share or reveal how you
personally came to appreciate this female body type?
A#1 - I'm not sure how most people come to appreciate one
certain body type or another, or for that matter what brings most people to be
attracted to anything, really. I imagine that we are all born with certain
hard-wired human traits, and are also influenced to a large extent by the
environment in which we live.
As a figurative artist, I've
come to appreciate all sorts of different body types as beautiful or
sculptural... large, small, older, younger… I seem to find something unique and
beautiful in everyone. I love trying to capture those qualities I see in people through
my sculpture.
To answer your question
though, I guess I've always appreciated women with rounder, fuller figures than
any of the stick-thin images of models we see that are so popular in today's
culture. It's just that there's something so beautiful and sensual about the
way the flesh looks on a real woman. With all of her soft, fleshy curves,
spilling and undulating mellifluously over her body... beauty. No denying it.
Q#2 - Can you elaborate on examples/sources of
inspiration? (philosophy, art history, social, etc.)
A#2 - Oh I love all the renaissance masters ... Rodin,
Michelangelo, Bernini, & P.P. Rubens of course, to name a few. I like
Botero, but his work leaves me unsatisfied somehow. Too cartoony or ‘baloony’
or something. I saw really very little contemporary art in the world that
depicted rubenesque women with the sense of beauty and grace that I longed to
see out there.
Q#3 - Do you use models? Or work from images and your
mind/imagination?
A#3 - All of the above. I’m constantly imagining new
ideas for sculptures and often work them out on paper and in clay. When I have
a model sit for me, I usually take photos of her and then work from them. as
the sculpture nears completion, I may ask the model to return for a final
sitting.
Q#4 - The poses for your sculpture pieces truly reflect
the ample feminine form in more relaxed, and sensually alluring lines. What can
you share or divulge about conveying that type of sensuality in a bronze piece?
Challenges perhaps?
A#4 - For some of my sculptures, the smooth,
transparent, honey-colored patinas you can achieve with bronze really lend my
figures a softness that you wouldn’t get with another medium. Bronze is a warm
metal that can be cast into just about anything you might imagine. The
foundry's job is to make the casting look just like the artist envisioned it.
Sometimes it takes more work than others, depending on the complexity of the
project.
I create the original
sculpture in clay and then have it cast in bronze. The lost-wax casting method
is a 12 step process involving up to 30 workers and 6 small business and takes
3 months to a year for completion of a finished bronze sculpture. It’s an
ancient, violent process that enables the sculptor create a limited edition of
replicas of the original that may actually outlive our society. I like to
wonder if future archeologists are going to dig up some of these delightfully
abundant ladies of mine and ponder on them as one of the few remaining examples
of life in our culture today.
Q#5 - What can you share about the 'round' & circle
parts in these sculptures? Meaning? Intent? The Goddess connection? (I love the names for both of these pieces, & would love to own Meditation or a piece similar to it, btw...)
A#5 - They have different meanings and references.
"Round, Perfect, Beautiful" draws the viewer's attention at first
with the shiny, beautiful, perfect circle, and then the discovery is made of
the small, round, proud lady on top. My idea was to bring people's attention to
the things they view as beautiful... A round circle - a round woman? I include
other forms in my work like rocks, metaphoric or not, which I like to make
appear weightless.
Q#6 - If you're willing, tell me about how your first
sculpture came to life. Was it of a round, curvy woman?
A#6 - I think the first sculpture I remember doing
after finding some particularly clay-like mud for my mud-pies, was that of a
kind of squishy man of sorts, when I was 6 years old, LOL.
Q#7 - Our culture has a great deal of negative attitudes
about 'abundant' female form. What are some of your thoughts on this? Any
advice or insight for abundant women? Anything you'd like to speak to or share
with other men who are admirers of the abundant female form?
A#7 - It seems that today the media actively promotes
the idea that people with the skinny body type are beautiful, and people with
any other body types are repulsive. It's the last form of prejudice in our
society that we allow, really. I feel like it’s a malicious campaign
perpetuated by the fashion , health/fitness industries, and the diet pill
manufacturers designed to sell more products to unhappy consumers. The severely
photo-shopped images of (literally) impossibly wafer-thin fashion models give
our youth such backwards ideas of what is beautiful, they are regularly
starving, vomiting, mutilating, and hating themselves their whole lives in
order to try and fit in.
My daughter was 4 years old when she first told me that she
felt fat and needed to diet.
I feel like it’s important to
get as many size-positive images of people out in the world as possible. It's
one of the best ways we can affect change in the world. Art communicates ideas
at a sub-conscious level sometimes more powerfully than words ever could.
This fixation on the 'skinny'
as the iconic beauty is only a recent phenomenon historically, anyway. Up until
the late 50's, all throughout history, the curvy woman was the most desirable.
It's true, you can look it up.
Watching people's expressions change as they look at my sculptures is
one of my favorite pastimes. I love the joy, and the amazement that lights up
the faces in folks as they realize that they actually like this
sculpture even though they somehow think they shouldn't. It shakes them
up, :-) as art is supposed to.
As I've toured the country
showing this 'goddess series' to people at shows and galleries, I've often
shared tears with someone who'd spent their entire lives feeling disgusting in
the eyes if the world and who, when suddenly confronted with a sculpture of a
large, curvy woman looking so beautiful, suddenly realizes that it looks just
like they do, themselves. That’s the best.
Thank you Adam, I couldn't agree more. ~ Ruby Madden
