Artifacts; Floyd Shaman (Sculptor)

OK. First up just for identification purposes tell me your name. We know where you where you are. Right my name is for the sham and. Pronounced sham man. Not shaman and we're at 214 South Bulgar Cleveland Mississippi 3 8 7 3 2. So what kind of a sculptor. How did you you know it's OK. Oh I started. As a painter. I'm in undergraduate school and then. Got my undergraduate degree in painting and then I purchased for a sculptor for three years in a studio and became interested in that I took my masters degree in sculpture. And at that time I was interested in the stone carving and when I moved to Mississippi then I found that there was no stone in the car. And so I. Tried wood and I tried the logs. And the logs split and cracked because I

understand they dry out when they were up. When you. Take them inside. So that's when I started laminating and that's where I am right now. I've been doing that for. 20 years I guess if you know 20 years I've been laminating would tell me a. Brief History of your life so far. Where you from Glee. OK I grew up. In Wyoming. And lived on a ranch. Part of the time. And I was kind of a cowboy and I went to University of Wyoming and served time in the Navy came back. And tended bar and went to college for oh I don't know 10 or 12 years something like that trying to get an undergraduate degree and was working on that on our own all the time. And then when I got to get my master's

degree. I lived in credit which of Nebraska My my my family did a good job out of graduate school and then I got a job at Delta State and taught at Bill say for 10 years and then I decided to go on my own and I've been making sculpture since 1970 just as a professional sculptor. When you see it when you're up that does day hike up. Why did you decide to stay. You said something. My family my children who have always been very supportive of me as well and my wife were going to high school here. And actually my oldest son was ready to start college. And so we decided to stay here until all the kids are going to college and finish college at least and right now we're pretty much part of the community. It

turns out that three of my six children went to Mississippi State which didn't have anything to do with living here in Cleveland but my older son didn't graduate from the state. So we do have. Our children really are the main reason that we have stayed on here you know so much you were quietly you know people cause stuff in life. Take a look at your work here. I am right I rarely leave this property. I go to work with a clock in the morning and I. Quit at 5 or sometimes I come in once a Jeopardy for 30. But I don't get too many drop in people. I don't encourage that I show my work in galleries and I would rather prefer that occasionally people come and they're welcome but I don't conduct two or anything like that and it is a quiet life I just go to work. It's like any other occupation you simply

make art but you have to come up with ideas as well. And that's the hard part I guess. But again. I'm represented by. Elaine Benson on Long Island. The show being him. Kurt Kurtz Bank Gallery in Memphis the attic gallery in Vicksburg sold all real in San Antonio. John Roby in Denver and Lois Lambert in Santa Monica. So that's that's who represents real source of my work I don't think I've left anybody out. Well whether you think it was my work sells bit or actually in the East than it does anywhere else in the northeast. And the New York

City area. I don't know why that is but I've had greater success there than I have anywhere else. However my gallery in Vicksburg does very well. On smaller pieces particularly she does very well for me. Tell me why it's in your piece if you will. You were Senate city. They get Lee said. I don't think there's much Southern influence in my work I hope I would hope it's more universal and that of course there are Southern things I do a lot of watermelon things which I guess are Southern but you can eat a watermelon in Canada I suppose so that's no big thing. My work primarily deals with the human figure the human condition had in the past few years I've done quite a few

animal pieces there but they're kind of bizarre animal pieces they're not real animals and they're not anatomically correct but they are dealing with animals and also that that's led me into a more functional kind of things as well so I play back and forth like I do a piece I do a chair. And sometimes I'll put a figure on it and sometimes I don't Sometimes I believe it was a cheer. So there's there's a nice difference there I think. Tell me about some of your people there. Certainly some of that serial was that these people were real. We're going to be fine. I think there are a couple of your kind I think there are many.

Well I'm an observer of people. I think it's basically what it is but these are not one person these are composites. So if I see a really nifty nose on somebody it's going to wind up. Perhaps on a piece that has an interesting chain and then I have a big stomach or big fanny or small fanny in a big stomach or so it's a combination of I'll do I'll do pieces so. That I did a piece called literally in the truckstop queen at one time and she's a composite of all the truck truck stop cashiers between here and New York so that when we when we would take a load of work to see for a show in New York we would stop at all these truck stops and I just observed there's sort of a hierarchy of the classy of the truckstop the classy with a beehive haircut is in and that sort of thing. So really it became a composite out sort of that idea. But then to

complete that idea it has to be I have to observe more than one. So they're really not portraits and they're not really people and even even some of the pieces I've done of which I think I say are my kids that look like my kids but it's sort of the essence of my kids. Tell me about me. Tell me about being in your country people music coming up. OK evil music. When Chuck Berry turned 60 I thought I should do it I was to to Chuck because that when I was growing up in the 50s when I was a teenager in the 50s music rock n roll music was just coming and I used to go outside of town so I could listen to Randy's Record Shop and belt and see to get to get rock n roll music I used to listen to Del Rio Texas and from Wyoming it's a long distance. But anyway I always

admired Chuck Berry and so when he turned 60 I sort of sympathise with him I just turned 50 at that time and since. Sort of traumatic as well. So I did this piece and I have and because rock n roll music was considered evil and there was all this kind of silliness going on about censorship and so forth and so giving and we could charge him with snake to play and so I named the evil music because rock n roll at that time was was thought of as evil music. Now that's where teen compared to the stuff going on. So that's really what the piece is about. And also it's it's very animated he's jumping around and coming bursting through the door and hopping around on one foot. And so with this kind of what that piece is all about. Think a little of that rock n roll part of anything is it you know way that simple rock

n roll dad is frightening. Knowing he did exist it's like any other thing you sort of move on. I think I'm not any expert on music by any means but I think it's like anything else you build. One thing is built on another tick take from one thing take from the existing and build and it's very difficult to build from nothing. You have to have something you have to have a lump of clay or a piece of wood or an idea at least. And then you build from that and so you take off so I think modern music is probably the same thing. I think rock and roll probably has classical influences I don't know upon that sort of thing really. Tell me about yet. You're.

My a. Friend of mine I do it big or I was a little built we built a small foundry and to cast bronze in aluminum and there was a invention is another. Necessity is the mother of invention because that's what it is and we didn't have access to a foundry and I wanted to do some small castings of some kind so we built the foundry and small ceramic shell foundry and then my wife says well why should Mason bowl well I'm not that interested in doing real totally functional thing so after we cast them and even as I was developing them I was sort of fighting function that they are functional and yet they aren't functional because I painted them with a very delicate with acrylic paint which makes them very delicate could be scratched very easily so you don't really want to use them particularly they're more sculptural in that sense and there are silly things that birds and dogs and things hopping around.

Bird bads and that sort of thing. But that was the general idea. And then we've also done small pieces little little things that we can sort of enhance my wood carvings with and that's basically where the idea I had was to to do the small pieces for years. But we got involved in bowl but it's not a lifetime thing and I think it's something you are seeing more of. Well I seem to be I hadn't really planned it and but I do. I have been doing some functional things that are functional in the sense that you can sit on them or some of the table but. It seems like the idea of having having it starting out with that table and then being able to do that artistic statement and hang it on there is kind of a nice thing to

do both. You know since you can sit on your skillz or rather just look at it. Yeah I think that's probably why I'm going toward using that and I don't know that that's. Not sure that that will be continuing. You never know but I keep fighting the idea of total function and I don't I'm not really interested in that. I'm not interested in being a craftsman in that sense the craftsmanship is tearing seem unimportant. But I'm not interested in being a furniture maker in quotes. You know you get a little bit it's a little bit that you don't think you're going to continue in there that pretty much how you work it just so you know you feel like doing this for a while. There's not a market that's driving was what you were.

I don't have any kind of market drive that I know of. I'll get a commission occasionally and so I'll have to shift yours possibly and go over that direction. But the nice thing about being an artist is you can do what you please if you like it that's fine and that makes it good in my mind were nobody else might like it but I do so like I can make my own choices and that's the nice part of being an artist is you have total freedom to decide that you don't have anybody looking over your shoulder. You might centerpiece to a gallery and they say it stinks and I send it back to you. But that so what that's that's fine that's least you're working this is what you want it to be. So if you start trying to think about. What can I make that will sell. I think you're really in trouble and that's why it's very difficult for me even to do commissioned pieces because there is this person who is paying money and

they they would like to dictate to me what to do and I'm not used to doing that and I'm not interested in having them do that. And so that's probably the reason I don't get remake commissions because I'm not terribly co-operatives for taking orders from anybody. I mean you just said you were doing the chess set up in the studio that. Designed. To use kewpie doll solo I don't know they're actually Hubie those but they're just little small wax doll figures. And I thought. Chess is a game of you normally think of warriors and swords and shields and people banging on each other. So I thought to journalist then and make an I would little kids would be kind of fun. And so my king I put a beard on this little kid which it would be like dressing up and

I think all these pieces are kind of getting dressed up like little kids will do. But it's I think it's a nice idea to have a have a general shift where they go out there and kind of bump bellies but they don't really splatter each other very much. So you know here you have it under We're doing a friends and family just said that I've invited friends and family to do one piece and I've. Signed the piece so that somebody in Michigan is doing the queen and somebody in Albuquerque or Tucson or someplace is doing a bishop and someone else doing a night and so forth and so the name of the thing they visually won't make any sense at all because it will be everybody's idea of what a poem or a whatever piece what they think it is. And some are going to be very traditional Some are going to be fairly far out and then we will oppose those by color or

put a green patina on one of the black between on the other or something like that. But I think it's going to be very very interesting just because. Everybody's got a different idea and everybody has a lot of dragging their feet I keep having to write letters saying hey come on you know there are most for the most part they're all artists and they should know better but the they're goofing off too. But we've gotten 10 or 12 back so far and it's difficult to do this through the mail because in the summertime in Mississippi it's rather hot air. So are the whack shows up and maybe kind of a blog in there so. So they have we have to concentrate on doing it in colder colder weather. I think I think that will probably pick up when the weather cools a little bit. I mean you're saying well my dog. Join in on the chess cities report of my shifts as well here. I was working on a vulture for one of the bowls had left the

studio for a moment to come in the house and I came back the vulture was missing. I look around my dog are fed was chewing on this vulture and pretty well Nora with up and so I took it away from him at the end of the Weatherwax which were good for a dog in the first place but took it away from me I was looking at it was really kind of nice as all chewed up and grass showed into the teeth marks and our old and and so I'm out of bed on a couple of little pins and put a basin and we cast an aluminum so so your skin to be part of the friends and family. I guess he's a friend or a family member but I guess he's a family member as well so it's covering both bases. But what it's like here where you're like that. Yes we know what you want. I think we have depending on the season we have between

20 or 15 and 20 cats and sometimes I think we're down to 11. Depends. And so when you look in my yard there's always a cat somewhere up in the house on the roof of the house or under the house or laying on the hood of the car or just lurking around somewhere. And so I thought that might be kind of interesting to do your kids like I did some cutouts of cats and painted them. They're kind of cartoon cats. And we stuck about your stick to stick them out there you can have a cat wherever you want to in your own yard you know have to feed these cats that I did because it's a bit. That the the things that happen in my area doing influence my work a great deal the whole sort of a lot of them are based on the cat and the bird in the dog and another cat in it and one chasing the other and they're hopping around in there and snarling at each other and chasing each other and so forth so that's

that's part of my world in that little backyard drama that's what I would name one of my bowls because that's exactly what happens around here there's always the dogs always barking at something and it isn't anybody coming in my yard it's a new time cat in my yard or something like that. So yeah things do happen. And it's very simple things like that can you can influence my work. When it went through I noticed that a lot of work on street you can learn and show you that you know a lot of rubberneckers people do it. We don't have any curtains on the window in the in the what we call the gallery head that's for a reason the. We had curtains on the windows and people were kind of upset that walk by we could walk walkers in the neighborhood in the evenings particularly if we put the curtains up and people were

called in it would stop us in the grocery store and say yeah take your curtains now we want to see what's in your gallery so we leave the windows like they are so that people can walk by and look at it and we get the slow moving cars cruising by very slowly and people craning in and you'll see out of state cars where people bring their friends around to see the sort of the odd guy in the town I guess the local freak or whatever it is to look at the worst of it do we get to know quite a bit of that. Linda I don't buy that. It's like living in a fish bowl in that in that sense but the it's not the. It's not anything that you know of any thing you want as. Well.

Look at what your average piece say. Oh yeah are you. You can easily do you just want. Your. Time is not terribly important as far as making sculpture goes and people are quite interested in knowing how long it takes guests in their lives Time is important but to me it really isn't important but I would guess that a life size piece probably takes a month and a half two months something like that on a smaller piece it takes less time. I made a statement I was asked one time in a catalog catalog to make an artistic statement and my statement was the big ones take longer and I think that's kind of what I think I boiled it down to. The time is that terribly poor but we have things

that are in the studio. Were we working a rotation we have certain pieces going at once so that if I'm sending one piece or my helper is sanding on a piece I can be cutting out a piece or he can be gluing piece. And so it kind of goes in a circle. And so things come back and they're finished and we take that out and but but we've also started other pieces. So it's a circular kind of motion so it's very difficult to keep track of how long one particular piece takes I guess I should really do that sometime just to satisfy people's curiosity but I really don't know. Totally. You know time one that sort of thing. That you know make it work and let me know. You know he kind of is what you get you get that she was just talking and sweating. But yeah I don't have anything else is there anything that you wanted.

I don't think I think we've pretty well you hit me yet you were singing since you're standing there.