In late 2000 I took up stone carving. This turned out to be the ideal millennial gift to myself. Despite needing to use safety gear and rebuild muscles, I have devoted many happy hours during the last five years to sculpting. This fervor stimulates questions. “Why,” ask friends and family, “do you sculpt?” “Why,” ask new acquaintances in the sculpting community who well know that not all rocks can be shaped with equal ease, “do you so often sculpt the hardest stones?” I myself often reflect on these issues. Several reasons come to mind—some deriving from earlier experiences; some connected with my own and others’ responses to my work; and one that strikes me as quite idiosyncratic.

Through sculpting, I am following up on various strands of my personal experience. From contacts with my family’s architects, artists, and art historians and explorations of galleries, museums, and gardens, I have long had an interest in design. From outings to the shores, mountains, gorges, and deserts of California and its neighbors, I have been fascinated with the ways in which geological processes, especially erosional forces, shape the stone we find in natural settings. From examining paleo- and neolithic tools and monuments, Egyptian, Cycladic, and Olmec figurative pieces, and twentieth-century works by Moore, Brancusi, Noguchi, and others, I came to embrace the dream of sculpting stone. This desire was reinforced by my decades of historical scholarship, another craft in which materials originating in the past are used to create works that speak to the present. The two practices have, of course, many differences. But only one of these has really mattered to me. While I have frequently been frustrated by the time that my historical projects have taken to reach fruition, I can now count on finishing most carvings within weeks or months of starting them.

Through sculpting, I am also learning to reach out to family, friends, and strangers in ways that are new to me. My carving tools and techniques enable me to dramatize the narratives behind the inherent beauty of the stones that I have collected for carving. More important, they enable me to shape forms whose lines, reflections, and shadows delight the eyes. In addition, these forms’ edges, curves, and textures may be enjoyed by caressing fingers because, unlike soapstone, alabaster, chlorite, and many marbles, the hard stones that I find in the Northwest do not scratch or soil. Sometimes as well, the forms and/or their bases engender a curiosity about the carving process that is enjoyable to satisfy. Most importantly, as my armamentarium and skill grow, I am acquiring the ability to create sculptures that strike resonances within my own or others’ minds. Two examples come to mind. Inspired by the surface textures of an eroded schist found below the White Mountains just east of Lone Pine, I sculpted it into a stylized organic form. It reached completion just when the U.S. was entering Iraq so I could not help but think of the mayhem going on there.The resulting piece- "Ars Longa, Vita Brevis" -evokes the troubles that continue to plague our world. Recently I finished sculpting a large granite hand that is cupped as if to scoop water from a stream or shelter a match from the wind. It is large enough for my grandchildren to clamber on or read in. They have done both, so I call it “Child’s Haven.”

Finally, through sculpting hard stones, I am seeking—I suspect—one form of long-term immortality here on Earth. All the stones that I have sculpted had their genesis long ago. While the youngest are only fifteen million years old, the most aged are some fifty times older. Hence, some of my sculptures may bemuse our distant descendants and one or more might possibly intrigue intelligences that emerge on or come to this planet long after our kind are gone. Who knows??

Karl Hufbauer