STONE OBJECTS (translated by Katarzyna Łubieńska)

I ”discovered” the stone in the beginning of the seventieth. I made my first contacts with other sculptors on a sculpturing open-air meeting in a sandstone quarry in Rottwendorf- a village near Pirna (former German Democratic Republic). For nearly two months I absorbed the atmosphere of that place. At that time I mostly concentrated on an uncovered history of the Earth, a spectrum of time.

There I also came across many prints of old forms of life in sandstone blocks and layers of post-oceanic sediments, which together with masons’ hardship and their archaic but at the same time an effective technique of spot drilling, stopping and cleaving made me think about it.

Such places and such material brought me closer to STONEHENGE creators, sculptors from EASTER ISLANDS and their magic and mysterious cults, pyramids’ constructors laying blocks on blocks into the direction of sun as if they wanted to make a link between heaven and the earth.

“A SEQUENCE OF BOULDERS”

Michałowice 1991

“ GREETING” sandstone,

height 4 m1976

“ GREETING” in the background

a sandstone quarry in Rottwendorf Pirna

In summer 1977 I participated in the International Sculptors’ Symposium in Burgas (Bulgaria) where I made the sculpture “THE LYING” of marble. It was awarded a Grand Prix . In 1980 I organized the Sculptors’ Symposium in Borów (Lower Silesia in Poland).Among many participants were such well known Polish sculptors as :Grzegorz Kowalski, Maciej Szańkowski, Leon Podsiadły, Krzysztof Bednarski, Marek Sarełło and I- Zbigniew Frączkiewicz.

The sculptures of the above sculpturing open-air meeting are exhibited in Chocianów (Poland).

Another sculpture entitled “STONE FEET” (a monument of 1980 ), was left in Borów quarry in recompense for the firm for used materials. Unfortunately it did not survive there. Again in 1978 in the same gigantic granite quarry in Borów, I gave a rise to another important object named (CART).It was presented during one of my individual exhibitions in Warsaw Gallery of Sculpture and in “Zachęta”- a gallery of art in Warsaw in 1978.

At that time (1978) the idea of a huge granite platform-like object entitled “ TO PEOPLE OF THE EARTH” came to my mind. I was inspired by an Indian manner of burying dead, when a body stops being in existence while placed on a raised platform. I begun to work on it in a smaller scale, at first deciding it would be made of cast iron and bronze (collection CR in Orońsk-Poland). At the same time in the quarry in Borów , I started preparing stone elements essential for me to start crating the object in a large scale. Thanks to great friends and lovers of art, I managed to transport 100 tones of immense blocks of granite to a place with a spectacular view, called Jerzmanowa near Głogów (Poland). The object was made in 1985.

In 1983 I made a journey by my “tiny” Fiat 126 p through Germany and Switzerland to CARRARA. During the International Symposium I realized a sculpture entitled “A PILGRIM made of marble and old wood. That rough, kneeling figure with spread hands is my homage to our Pope John Paul II. I gave the sculpture a present to FANANO town, where I participated in the next symposium. I wish I could make a copy of that sculpture of granite.

“STONE FEET” are symbols of human lots. They are short signals of the relationship of a man with the Earth. I have always created them.

The most splendid objects in scale are in VILLACH (Austria) in ZIELONKA near Warsaw, in Dűrbach in Switzerland and in GOEDENS near Bremen.

While thinking about a monument for Lubin (1992), I decided it would be a “A SEQUENCE OF BOULDERS”, the object which emanates with the expression of jagged rocks, both their natural and mechanical texture and their simple rhythm.

It became a part of a quarry in Michałowice, a part of its landscape and at the same time a part of Karkonosze mountains. It was set there up only for a while. What I was inspired by was a folk and trashy way of decorating Polish homestead, thus I decided to paint the stones different colours , violate their natural beauty, make them cheerful- also just for a while

“A SEQUENCE OF COLOURED BOULDERS” came into being also in Jelenia Góra square market in 1993 and later in Szklarska Poręba.

“CIRCLE 2000-THE ASYLUM OF IRON PEOPLE ( QUARRY) is an object in a circular arrangement that embodies in itself both experience and dreams that have been within me for years.

It has been in Szklarska Poręba at the foot of Szrenica mountain for some time.

It is not only a sculpture but also an object of architecture at the same time. It is a work in progress all the time gaining new context It is in a sense an open work developing and flourishing. It has been going through different changes because it is an element of a process depending on time, seasons of the year, day and night, but also my emotions and ideas. It serves as an atelier, a gallery called GALLERY F, it is often a place for meetings, amusement, entertainment and simply an asylum for reflections.