Work | Deborah Arnold

Each stone has a presence for me to discover. I create a dialogue between my material and myself, with viewers completing the process.

Fragment

Soapstone on steel platform

40cm x 55cm x 39cm

The two elements of this piece were carved from one piece of soapstone.

I started on the outside edge and carved inward to reveal the support structure. It came from observing how egg shells stick together when they are peeled.

Dream Boat

Coral and steel support

124cm x 70cm x 38cm

My work often means more than one thing. With Dream Boat, (it only floats in your dreams) a coral boat floats in a cradle representing both transportation and our travel through life. Boat forms are attractive to me both container and transportation. They are ancient in symbolism.

Precipse

Colorado alabaster and steel base

147cm x 86cm x 36cm

Deceptive pink colour belies the slippery slope of life’s challenges! One must be careful! Don’t let go! I was feeling challenged when the image of this slope came to me.

Wave Parts on a steel base

Chocolate alabaster and steel stand

143cm x 70cm x 45cm

The power and presence of the flow of water on earth can be self destructive. To capture this form I studied wave physics to ‘feel’ how waves are created. It takes patience to, day after day, work toward the final shape by chiseling away very small fragments and chips of stone. This piece has a tumultuous, tumbling feeling.

Inward Turning

Carrara marble

110cm x 57cm x 31cm

In Italy I was able to choose pieces of Carrara Marble that attracted me. I saw sheet of paper rolled into a tube which inspired this piece. As I work, often the original concept shifts.

Black Shield

Anhydrate on steel stand

158cm x 60cm x 24cm

My thoughts at the time were of protecting my heart and what people do to protect themselves. Often we put up shields to keep from being hurt.

Industrial Egg

Chrystolino Alabaster, steel stand and plubing pipe armature

158cm x 37cm x 37cm

Almost robot in form, what we are doing to ourselves by being mechanistic? Losing touch with nature? Cut off, from our world? I do wonder. This head like shape absolutely glows in the light. It seems to be listening to “industrial noise”, the sounds of communication.

Shift

Rasberry Alabaster on steel stand

155cm x 46cm x 46cm

This is actually on piece of stone. I am attracted to the illusions in certain pieces of my work. It’s a reference to those precious moments when one’s world shifts off balance slightly.

Compliment/Complement

Pyrotholite (wonderstone), wood base

146cm x 61cm x 40cm

Two separate carved pieces of the same stone pinned together seem to support each other while remaining separate. It’s a symbolic relationship where together it is whole, each performing it’s own function.

Breakthrough

Venus Marble on steel base

144cm x 100cm x 40cm

This piece celebrates, in each of us, the moments when clarity triumphs over hesitation and confusion, while remaining whole. Carving and polishing this very hard stone was challenging.

Bond

Street stone on carrara marble

Based on the grace of a parasitic relationship. Sculpted at a time when I was portraying personalities in stone.

Incubation

Raspberry Alabaster on steel platform

47cm x 56cm x 38cm

This kind of my work is painstaking, demanding long hours to finish in the crevices where one seed pushes against another. I get the feeling that any or all of the pods could burst. It’s a suspended moment in time. Inspiration comes from observing fish eggs floating together on the edge of a stream.

Specimen

Colorado Alabaster on steel stand

127cm x 67cm x 26cm

Is it a bone or fossil or water creature offering itself up for war? It’s about how relics are created and I begin to think more about time.

Call/Caul

Utah Orange Alabaster, aluminum base

166cm x 76cm x 44cm

Rising upward, crowned by its own sign of being born, I feel musical movement in this piece. The caul hanging over the upward moving form is like skin, fleshy. Took a long time to polish.

Rex Egg

Caramel Alabaster on steel base

147cm x 33cm x 33cm

I couldn’t allow the rough textured, discolored crevice in the original boulder to be carved. This is the biggest of the stone egg series. It is as if some large creature is about to breakthrough its shell. I feel the powerful potential in this egg.

Early Icon

Henna marble and building beams

190cm x 81cm x 66cm

I was thinking about belief systems. Differences and commonalities about what we believe and also observing primitive systems and what needs these systems served in our cultural history. Henna marble is very hard, like granite. This piece is full of fossils. As I carved I uncovered fossils of shells, ferns and trilobites.

Egg Squared

Chlorite on steel stand

Balance between what we see and what we don’t see. Looking through the open body of the form, our view is refocused. Potential changes in the way we ‘see’.

Self Feeding Egg

Marble on steel stand

126cm x 46cm x 33cm

With copper pipes coming up from the floor, it appears that this egg form is resting, and healing itself. It looks alive, maybe pulsing, certainly waiting for it’s moment of life, certainly a creation myth in the making.

Presentation Egg

Colorado Alabaster on steel stand

119cm x 38cm x 38cm

She leans forward, presenting her fecund self to visitors. She glows with preciousness.

Night Egg

Anhydrate on steel stand

115cm x 41cm x 33cm

I chose to care a form which was larger than the stone available, giving me only a glimse of the night sky formations. Easy to finish to reveal its colours.

Split Pod

Rubino stone from Italy

Carved for the body of work that dealt with eggs and seeds of all natures.

Eclipse

Utah Alabaster suspended on steel armature

193cm x 123cm x 70cm

Thinking about the wonder of blood moon eclipses one of which I’ve seen. How it hangs unmoving in a night sky, widely illuminating the darkness. I hold my breath. This is engineering which only resembles the real thing.

Tablet

Sage Alabaster on antique wood beams

166cm x 76com x 44cm

This is a statement about how, during the life span of our species, we have recorded culture. Thicknesses are text. Lines of colour are text. Flat surfaces are pages. The details of the book have be reorganized.

Enclosure

Raspberry Alabaster on steel stand

160cm x 50cm x 30cm

My inspiration was the stillness of a safe place where the embracing air nearly hums with potential. One can feel the atmosphere change in the enclosure. It is a most unusual stone showing its process of formation.

Blood Egg

Red clorite on steel stand

115cm x 40cm x 40cm

The colour of our blood...We empty and fill like tides, like the moon. We receive and discharge energy. This is a container of life. Carved from, and preserving, the outer edge of the boulder was a challenge.

Goddess Metamorphosis

Chrystolino on steel platform

40cm x 80cm x 40cm

I have been appreciating all sorts of creation myths. The egg series is part of this consideration, too. With Goddess, the myth is that this boulder fell to earth. It broke open to reveal Goddess in her early egg form.

Natural World

Bronze and Marble

50cm x 105cm x 56cm

Investigating the power of creation myths… taking my inspiration from Native creation myth of the turtle carrying the planet on his back. This inset like form creeps along the floor. I feel its breath.

Voices

Chlorite on steel stand

157cm x 36cm x 44cm

Exploring community and harmony in the community... the columns support each other and become one, larger one, like voices in a musical chord. I see the human in this piece. Chlorite is a pleasure to carve and its satin finish radiates light.

Tiny Perfect Egg

Italian Alabaster on aluminum stand

158cm x 23cm x 23cm

Continuing the series of forms, it represents creation myths, rebirth and fertility. This egg has a radiant presence almost as if it’s breathing. Carving a classic egg from requires patience and skill with my pneumatic chisels. All my work is hard polished in the final stage.

Stillness of Light

Italian Chrystolino on a steel base

180cm x 65cm x 36cm

In the collection of R. McLaughlin Gallery. Gazing at the moon. Breath, changing light and time, hover in the clear night sky. I cannot move away from such light. Some pieces of stone call to me to carve with simplicity in mind.

Embryo

Bronze

27cm x 56cm x 32cm

Thoughts of the origins of life, describing the first original division of cells, it connects me to my work. I cast this piece from the stone original.

Standing Stone

Chlorite, steel base on a steel stand

157cm x 36cm x 44cm

I was inspired by the mysteries of Stonehenge, in the way the size of each stone carries many messages of culture, ritual, healing, learning. This is carved from one stone but it’s strength comes from the power of support from each element.

Conceal/Reveal

Sage Alabaster

18cm x 75cm x 46cm

From the entity series it represents how our truths are slowly revealed even though we try to hide from them.

Beacon

Utah orange alabaster, steel base

103cm x 122cm x 39cm

Glowing more when light is focused on it, it is like a light house on our darkness, perhaps lighting our path. This is an unusual stone in it’s contrasting striations which seem to look like muscle tissue.

Inside/Outside

Italian Marble and field marble, bronze attachments, steel base

135cm x 50cm x 50cm

This feels to me that is describes sensing the differences between what we hold inside, intimately and what we allow to be seen. I enjoy hollowing out boulders while following their exterior shape.

Transforms

Bronze and calcite marble, wood base

I carved a circular piece with a large hole in the middle. The piece was pushed over breaking it into four or five pieces which I cast in bronze to suggest a transformation from whole to fragments.

Singular Fragment

Carrara marble, steel base

142cm x 24cm x 60cm

Fragment of an ancient torso. It’s narrative is that is was ‘discovered’ in ruins, suggesting the fires of ancient sculptures, leading to the notion that nothing is permanent except energy.

Cannon/Canon

Marish marble on steel base

130cm x 40cm x 75cm

Conflict between martial culture and religious culture, this piece could refer to music or canons. Wonderful stone to carve.