LETTER

The difficulties of a career in Art

I did not search for an explanation of my difficult route as an exploratory sculptor, it just came by accident when I heard the words, ‘”They were not team players!”. Wow! The light turned on, and I saw what I had not wanted to see. These same words I heard a long time ago, and consequently presented it in my painting “Restoration of Mrs. Morin”. It seemed self-explanatory, and then, when you add, earlier this year, the defamatory expulsion of two honest Liberals, I was gasping for air. 

 

I remembered that at my 1981 exhibition in Ottawa, I was accused of “plagiarism” by someone not accredited by any newspaper, not an Art writer nor a journalist of any kind. It was then, and now it is the same old politics all over again, where honesty is what suffers. I was presenting Multiple/Multilateral sculpture -- and there was nobody to “plagiarize”. No one, alive or dead in the whole world was doing this work.

Fortunately, I was living in a respectful democratic society in the Western world, where it is the public to whom I would listen. So whenever I was in doubt, all through my career, it was enough to look at the Guest Books from my Canadian exhibitions.  Among the many I read is from November 2, 1981, where Bernard P. Walke wrote, “True Canadian sculpture! - Canada’s heritage is enriched by this Multiple Sculpture.” It was the people who trusted me and my vision, and I would regain strength again to keep working.

Being excluded from my home scene, by the “Official Team”, I turned south to New York, Pittsburgh, and LA. There, the success of my work with visitors, the public, propelled me further westward -- to the Rodin Grand Prize(s) in Japan where my work received a hearty welcome. Thank you Japan! And that was for my sculpture, my art, my vision.

My work has not been just sculpture; in the process of exploration it evolved to Thought and Understanding. And it was in Canada, after the passing of my wife and collaborator, Danica, that I presented my Multiple/Multilateral sculpture.  This time in written words which anyone could experience -- thanks to this “little” newspaper, the Bulletin, which crossed its limitations and awoke attention beyond our borders.  Today I can thank you, the Canadian public, for your patience with me on my long road of many years of work -- and these letters. Thank you, this is very emotional for me, even in its logic.

Rasto Hlavina, 

Pontiac