M.L. SNOWDEN SCULPTURE
FOUNDATIONS OF SYNERGY

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Stasis along with Seismic Ray and Gravity, are three dimensional form explorations that imaginatively consider energy pattern phenomena and physics within sculptures that reach out to embrace larger meanings, exploring deep structural and spiritual expressions of humankind, planet Earth and the universe.

 

Stasis, in particular, begins its sculptural life as a portrait of Earth’s magnetic poles. In M.L. Snowden’s artistic realization, the sculptor defines Earth’s separated magnetic polarities as two forces poised at the height of energetic action. In Snowden’s hands, these summaries of polarized energy, resolved as figuration, become almost ecorché - rendered of overlaying mass to become icons of pure muscular stress. Ultimately, Snowden’s figural opposition in Stasis is resolved by the dramatic disbalance of their union - a powerful yet tenuous structural fusion which results in a harmonious state of almost impossible flotation for the art of bronze. Rising above both polarities in Stasis is a curvilinear circuit of abstraction that conceptually charts the shape of geophysical magnetism that exists above the Earth. In Stasis, Snowden sculpts the previous action of the polarities through this linear energy map resembling a physical echo; a ribbon-like formation rises overhead to balance the sculptural composition without seeming to do so. On another scale of dimension, Stasis has been lauded for establishing the landmark portrait of the elusive polarized atomic neutrinos recently identified by physicists.

 

Stasis as sculpture, rises from Snowden’s meditation on the eventual fused state of the bronze’s balance; Stasis is the term used in classic medicine to describe an almost friction-free state of inner harmonious well being. Stasis is an expression of the synergistic hold of the magnetic polarities upon Earth; yet in Snowden’s sculptural meditation, the artist has described a harmony that is often won from almost impossible challenges. Achieving a sculptural balance expressed within heavy cantilevered bronze figures is a metallurgical feat. The act of creating Stasis inspired deep reflections on the challenge often faced in striving to shape ideal physical and spiritual balances impinged upon by multiple forces.

 

As in each of M.L. Snowden’s works within the GEOLOGICAL COREIUM, Stasis exhibits its own unique tour-de-force advancement for the art of contemporary bronze. Stasis, in particular, represents an exploration into weighted bronze wall extrusion mathematics. Stasis’s significant weight effortlessly suspends along Snowden’s mathematical enhancement of what is possible to be achieved in the science and art of bronze metallurgy.

 

From important roots in the Paris studios of Auguste Rodin and Antonin Mercié, Snowden brings to Stasis, the glowing luminous platinum Fournier Patina and the touch of the historic Rodin tools that were used to shape Stasis’s dynamic features.

 

Such is the message of Stasis - that balance and its resulting harmony, can be created from opposing elements that at the outset may seem too strenuous and disparate for fusion - but that resolved by a masterful understanding of the deep workings within a medium - it is possible to create new horizons of structure and beauty. Ultimately, Stasis reaches out as a symbol for balance and peace in the world.