Heart of Anima

Basalt with zeolite. Marble and granite base. 2008. 19″ high with base.

Though I didn’t realize it at first, Heart of Anima is an Anima sculpture. I think it balances masculine and feminine energies more effectively than earlier Animas did. After I was committed to the smoothly curving ridge down the front and the concave surfaces that define it, an inclusion of zeolite appeared where a heart would be. As the surfaces and the curve settled into place, the zeolite grew larger and revealed its own heart. It is a butterfly fluttering in the heart of a rock.

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When the backhoe clearing for my studio unearthed this boulder and it was still tumbling, I hollered “Halt!” Even as a dirty, muddy, greenish coloured stone, it suggested something special. Eventually I carved Heart of Anima in it.

The sculpture is perfectly balanced physically and spins like a top on its base. The moderately metamorphosed, dense, fine-grained black basalt is strong. It supports broad, sweeping, highly polished jet black surfaces, and sharp edges and points that could hurt you if you were careless.

For a story about how I used computer modeling to engineer the stability of a system of cracks radiating from the corners of the zeolite inclusion of Heart of Anima see Graphing in Science and Sculpting.

Perrin Sparks’ pastel painting shows me wet-sanding the concave faces of this piece with rough diamond sandpaper backed with leather to stiffen it.

Photos by Lee Gass
Pastel Painting and sketch by Perrin Sparks