Using different mediums, artists take part in symposium
(Exerpt from the Nashua Telegraph, Saturday, November 3, 2007)
Paul Munson is a storyteller. He drenches you with descriptions of swimming in Virginia rivers that glitter with mica. He
recalls the way mist rolled over a Civil War battlefield so heavy with history he expected to see the faces of long-dead
soldiers peering out at him. He clucks his tongue over chatty Southern women, whom he says sit on their porch rockers
and pass on the region's history at twilight, sugar-coating the bloodiness of the war with euphemisms. Then he heads up
north and laments the way northerners draw our curtains at night and keep our neighbors at a distance.
It may come as a surprise, then, that Munson's medium is not words, it's bronze. The sculptor was one of four on-site at
the Andres Institute of Art in Brookline this fall as part of the annual international sculpture symposium.
Last month, the artists finished their works on the theme "The Secret," leaving behind permanent installations on the
institute's walking trails on Big Bear Mountain.
Satoru Takada of Japan wound metal rods into coils for his piece while Paty Sonville of Belgium polished granite to a fine
sheen. Bertha Shortiss of Switzerland carved mirror images of a female into stone. And Munson spun-sculpted stories out
of found objects – bendable straws, toothpicks, brass bolts and twigs – that he then cast in bronze. During his final week,
he bustled around the studio, showing off loops of copper wire that bound stones to his work."It's not fussy. That's how I
wrap my Christmas packages," he said.
As an artist, he said is always eager to create something new, something that has never been done before.
"If you're going to write a book about Mark Twain and it sounds like Mark Twain, forget it. It's been done," he said. "I
wanted to make something that wasn't static or heroic. If you fill it, as I try to do, then hopefully there's a story. If a person
isn't honest, there is no story."
Honesty, for him, means a lack of pretension. "Self-important is cheap. It's not real," he said, turning grumpy for a moment
and requesting that his work not be described in "-ly words."
Munson hadn't created a new piece in years and was pushed back into working on his art by a friend and fellow sculptor,
who told him about Andres.
"He pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me stretch. I didn't have
the opportunity to lie in the cut, in the blood, where it's warm," Munson
said, removing his paint-spattered ballcap to run a hand through his
shock of white hair.
His daughters also encouraged him to make the journey from Virginia.
"They told me, 'You've done it once. You've still got the juice. Go for it,'
" he said. Once he arrived, he said he did feel some pressure to create.
"I came up here dreading I'd fall off the high wire," he said. "You have to
know when to start and when to stop. There's a very fine line."
He used molds of green sand to cast his work, not knowing how the molten metal would affect the objects inside, giving
them new characteristics and sometimes even texture.
"You don't see what's happening until you open it up. The mold is like a placenta."
Many of Munson's past works were temporary installations. Knowing his piece was to remain in Brookline, where visitors
who wander through the woods daily would find it for years to come, guided him in his vision.
"It doesn't compete with nature," he said. "It sure stretched my human ability to its limits. I worked it out, and from start to
finish, it would be a whole dance."
"It's immediate and you remember it forever," said John Weidman, the director of the institute, who stopped by the studio
to check on his artists.
Munson reached out a worn leather work glove to shake the director's hand.
"I'm just very happy to be here," Munson said, his voice cracking a little. "I'm happy to have had that someone who says,
'Go to it.' Each morning I get up and I have to start all over again. I'm here now."
