Nothing is revealed in its true form but only in opposites – it is precisely through opposites that the true reality of the opposite concept is revealed. It is impossible to achieve this [understanding] with absolute clarity if it does not have a counterpart.
It is similar to a man whose art is making tools and vessels from clay and whose work is making pottery tools. The order of his work is to make rounds balls of clay before he makes anything. And then he must carve out and make holes in the balls. When the little boy sees what his father is doing, he shouts out “Father, why you ruining the balls?” The son does not understand that the father’s main objective is the holes. That only the holes can become a receptacle. And the son wants to close the holes that the father made in the receptacles. (Baal HaSulam Manuscripts).
There were periods in early history when people acted on gut feelings of the flow of life like rhythms of wind, water, plants, animals and earth. People felt confident in their effort and in the rest that followed. And all these have an expression of form and traces that time does not erase. Throughout the ages sculpture has told a formal story and not a literary story. The creation or the idea is created in thinking and there are very few words. There is collective memory and collective forgetfulness. The collective memory stems from solutions of form such as the height of a window and our map and from formal relationships between big and small plow handles and posts for tying up ships. All cultures have similar solutions. Collective forgetfulness – that things are not running smoothly and this is evidence of a crazy time. These periods are expressed in the form of a human statue and the relationship between the body and the head. The smaller the head and the larger the body – the craziness grows. The person’s confidence in his absolute control of the laws of nature grows stronger. Of course, the false sense of confidence is shaken as it has no right to exist.
The sculptor works in concrete, iron, wood, clay and stone. He slowly feels the material he is working with. The more he feels the matter and its properties, the more he understands that the matter has many hidden properties. In order to respect the material the sculptor has to treat it carefully, in a way that is becoming of it. One thousand and one parameters are discovered and revealed the more the sculptor connects to the matter. And then, by exerting effort into getting to know the matter and distinguishing through thousands of observations, he we will became an expert and a friend.
The importance of the thing comes first, because the concealed is bigger than that which is revealed. The sculptor craves to discover the source of all these, the root of something created from something and something created from nothing. The excitement makes him feel that at heart, and according to this lesson, his joy of creation has come into being.
The sculptor knows his lowness, that he is not more privileged than his contemporaries, who were not given the strength to work the holy work. And the sculptor accepted all those even in the simplest of ways, even without the intent and in not in its name, and even in the simplest possible way, if one can appreciate the importance of it, because sometimes what we can do is what is needed and even without intent.
The importance includes everything – the sculptor subdues and lowers himself and raises the importance of the environment to include in it the love of others and the attempt to change the world favorably. The body is a passing guest, but the energy that the person emits remains in eternity.
In art and science, there are constant attempts to rise to a higher conception of reality that chisels out a direction for a different path, for a new and sensitive way of thinking from what has been considered, until now, to be an au courant statement. The desire to know the matter and its importance, together with a desire to understand the laws that apply creates a big disadvantage which is the driving force to the next step.