J. Gail Greer

Select works from:
Forms & Reflections
October 10-31
Reception Tuesday, October 10
See also: Beth Crow

Artist's Statement

     I learned to carve stone the old-fashioned way, as a teenage apprentice (or as I put it at the time “stone slave”) to my mother, Gail. I started out simply by sanding her finished pieces. Though in the style of the renaissance workshops the master never signed her work right away. Often it took several tries to achieve an acceptable finished surface.

     Fed up with sanding and convinced I would find a different and “better” path for myself I headed off to college. Of course I didn’t study art, at least not right away, because Gail told me the same thing her mother had told her 25 years before…

     “I am not paying for art school. Do something practical to pay the bills first and then you can be an artist.”

     So I got a degree in Biology and, since I was there, an extra in Studio Art. And came home. Where I had finally graduated to rocks of my own. I didn’t intend to be a sculptor; just to work on a few little ideas I had. But then I got hooked, and decided that a Master’s in sculpture would just about round out my career as professional student. I have been carving ever since.

     The forms that interest me most are always natural: figures and animals simplified to their most essential shapes and lines. My day job, that something practical, keeps me away from the studio more than I would like now. And these days I often finish carving out a piece only to return and find that the master has sanded it for me. Though the tools and stone are the same somehow there is always a subtle difference in style and form between the master and her now grown apprentice.

Criis Greer, October, 2002

*all work copyright the artist