By Rory McAlpine
The fingers were always difficult, and not the proportions, they were the easy part. It was ‘touch’ that was difficult to capture. Hands are full of life, they sculpt and paint, but also wash and cook, stroke and clasp. Without capturing this trait within the fingers, the stone hands would look heavy and fake. Niccolò had always believed it to be in the creases, using his chisel he carved the hand with fine intersecting lines and marks. The constellation of markings gave the hands a history, thus inferring a future activity and imbuing them with that quality of touch.
Niccolò chiselled his sculptures in one of the west facing rooms of the house, he enjoyed watching the sunsets slink below the ocean, calling the return of its rays that danced like embers on his window. He worked on his sculpture in the early hours of the morning. Before then resting for breakfast with his family, where they often sat on the huge oak table in the garden, his children running around restless as his wife Maria laid down fruits from the orchard, and all around them the smell of lavender would ebb and flow as the borders were coaxed into bloom by spring. He loved the smell of lavender. It made you understand bees; drawn by flowers. The smells: sweet, alluring.
I don’t wish to give the impression they were a wealthy family. They lived in the large house overlooking the bay, sure, but it was on the brighter and more romantic side of ruin. Crumbling brick, a couple rooms home to the elements, peeling paint and carpets worn by many feet. It was that slightly shabby look not of neglect but of love and history that wore things thin from enjoyment and use.
When Niccolò got to sculpting the eyes, he had to take particular care. He chiselled one a day turning his sculpture to the window so he could study the patterns of shadow and light on its face at different times. First the incision for the pupil. Then his tools coax an iris to bloom around it. He had to make sure the eyes could see. That was imperative.
Art was a peculiar thing he mused; it was created by the artist then lived on after their death. He thought of all the things his statue would see, all the generations it could observe. Art lives through wars, across generations and revolutions. It could watch his children’s children grow old, and their children. It is easy in this vein of thinking to ask what legacy one’s life will leave. Even a sculpture exists only a tiny portion of time’s reign. But this is a dangerous question to give thought to like exposing fire to air, it hungrily devours it, growing to destroy all that is dear. Looking up at the stars, facing one’s own insignificance is to meet the face of oblivion. One’s life if they are lucky and extraordinary may momentarily cause a ripple in the cosmos. But a ripple is nothing in the churning Pacific Ocean.
Gazing out his window Niccolò saw his children roll around the grass. Another legacy that would live on. When they sought shade under the apple tree, he and Maria had planted again Niccolò noted, the tree another small legacy that would outlive him. The figure of Maria reading ‘D H Lawrence’s Collected Poems’ on the Juliet balcony of their room, wind tousling her face, so she had to pull the strands from her eyes. Him and Maria shared many legacies. In her hand was the legacy of another whose writing had long outlived him.
The collective. Was that the answer? After all, a hive is made by a thousand bees. Many stars make a constellation, two people make a child. For one to focus on one’s own life is to isolate a single shade of colour in a painting. Sure, one’s life might only make a ripple in time, but in a generation each individual’s ripple would soon culminate in a wave.
Niccolò’s finished sculpture showed a figure’s hand outstretched. He pulled a pebble his daughter had brought him from the beach and placed it among the curl of the outstretched fingers. He resolved to put it in some body of water so the pebble would be suspended, ready to be dropped.
Dropped, to bring forth a ripple.