My sculpture Pagliacci

Pagliacci is a beautiful opera by Leoncavallo on the tragedy of a jealous husband.  It recounts this tragedy as a commedia dell'arte troupe: There is a play within a play: "the troubles of Pagliaccio". I love the way Luciano Pavarotti performed it in 1994. The end is the most dramatic moment: Canio (real character of Pagliacci) stabs Silvio - his wife's lover at the end and declares: La Commedia è finita! – "The play is over!". It makes me cry every single time.


Sometimes revengeful anger may take us away from reality to a place where social and moral norms do not exist.  Mostly this is followed by guilt, regret, and sorrow.  My sculpture represents Pagliacci himself at a moment of remorse with the raven on his shoulder representing his self-consciousness.

Why did I make a sculpture on migrations?

G.S. Kharel - 2008

Numbers amaze me: how many nerve cells do our brains have and how much information is processed in a certain neural pathway? how many miles are there from earth to mars? how many bird species exist? One of the numbers that amazes me quite a bit is the number of people who has migrated. There are 200 million immigrants in the world today. Imagine the number of people who has migrated throughout the history; billions? People leaving their houses, neighbors, beds, everything with the hope of starting all over again.

While I am typing these letters, thousands of Syrians are trying to cross to Turkey to escape the current unrest. Will they ever be able to go back? During the World War II, nations migrated: everyone was on the move, peasants, collective farmers, intellectuals, army officers, landowners. Millions of people moved from India to Pakistan and vice versa when the two nations gained their independence from British colonial rule. Images of migrant workers fleeing Libya unrest, Serbian refugees fleeting Crotia, people moving in Bangladesh to escape flooding, the famous photograph of a mother with her two children migrating during the Great Depression have been occupying my mind for a long time. Eventually they found a way into a sculpture.

Dorothea Lange-1936

My sculpture “Migrations” is about 3 people leaving all they have behind. They have nothing to pack except their worries about the future. The woman on the far left side looks back one last time as if to save an image of what is being “past” at that moment. The second man has a little bag carrying the most essentials, perhaps some money, food, identification cards. The man in the front seems to be more hopeful – looking at the skies, same skies that will be there in a new life. I feel like more will be coming since I still can not stop thinking about all those people who has to suffer through migrations. 

A visit to a mysterious sculpture park in Belize

I visited a sculpture park during my recent trip to Belize.  The park Poustinia was once a cattle ranch has been transformed into a magical sculpture park during 1980s. Artists from England to Uruguay have contributed to this brilliant environmental project where the art is abandoned to be surrendered and taken over by the patient nature. Wood decays, metal rusts, everything goes back to where it started reminding me of our own lifes.

"Returned Parquet" was one of my favorite art pieces.  It is a strong piece on the removal of mahogany trees during the colonial period by a Wales artist. It is literally a mahogany parquet floor laid out on the ground, "reclaimed" from Wales and "returned to the Belizean rain forest" to be taken back to its origins gradually.

"The Watcher," by Guyana artist, Winslow Craig, is a serious judging face sculpted into a sapodilla tree. It watches us with a deep concern as if it is criticizing the destroying way of living we carry on.

Next was the eerie sculpture of a young girl in a praying position in the middle of a dried pool. Here is the description on this creative piece: The girl is kneeling on a flat stone and in her hands she holds a string, at the end of the string a buoy has been tied. Surrounding the statue are 25 concrete balls, which were dyed with a red pigmentation. All the elements are in a pond, which is usually dry but floods during the wet months of the rainy season allowing the art piece to remain submerged under water. The piece will still be visible, as the water remains crystal clear most of the time.


All this art left for an eternal change  in this damp landscape left me thinking about the way I live: am I doing all I can to make the world a better place for our children?

Help Ending Hunger in Horn of Africa

I am writing this blog to let you know about a great opportunity to help the people affected by hunger in Africa. As you might know, the most severe drought in decades is still threatening the lives of more than 12 million people — especially young children — in the Horn of Africa. Severe famine has ravaged parts of southern Somalia, and threatens to spread further if nothing is done to prevent it. Kenya and Ethiopia are also severely affected by the crisis, with millions in critical need of food and water. The situation in Somalia is compounded by the high level of violence and civil unrest- with women and children often bearing the brunt of the violence. East Kenya is now home to hundreds of thousands of Somalis who have managed to flee the violence and drought conditions.

Amurt - a non-profit organization - has been helping local people to provide food security for their families through agricultural cooperatives centered around crops that can survive in the drought stricken areas along with food distribution and medical support. They are now starting a project to build a spirulina farm. Spirulina is sustainable and can be grown in Kenya and will not need the time and expenses of importation.  It can also boost the local economy and best of all it is an amazing quick efficient fix for malnourished kids containing over 60% protein that is easily digestable. Their project is to set up a model and support it for a year till they get self sufficient.  They will feed between 50 and 100 malnourished children and take heights, weight and arm circumference to show the effects of the Spirulina.  Then they will start training others.

Donations can be made through the website www.AMURTEL.ORG which is located in Vermont. 

Sculpture at the River Market in Little Rock, Arkansas

This last weekend I was in Little Rock, participating at the Sculpture in the Park Show. This was the fifth annual show. It is a very well organized show with 44 nationally well known artists participating.  It was an honor to be surrounded by so much talent in one small place on earth. To name a few: Clay Enoch who owns a talent that diffuses from every single piece of clay he touches. And Jane DeDecker, whose work I have been admiring since I came across her work in a Santa Fe Gallery years before I have even started sculpting. 

The people of Little Rock are extremely supportive and nice.  It was a pleasure to watch the constant change of expressions coming forth over their faces while looking at my sculptures.  What is also interesting and informative for me is getting their opinions which they share without hesitation.  Since sculpture ideas evolve in my mind for a long time until after they become real they become like good friends to me.  When I finally create them I have a feeling of love for them. So hearing about them is like learning about a new side of a close friend’s personality.

It was the first time I released many of my sculptures at the show. The Depths of Mind of a human figure representing remembrance of our pasts was the most recent one. Reminiscence about events, people, and places in the past is similar to going down into a hole with a rope with this piece. Consciously or involuntarily we retrieve some essence of our past from the depths of mind.  What we can gather help elucidate our personalities.  One visitor said it reminds her of the saying she uses quite a bit: Tie a nut to the end of the rope when you are at the end of it” meaning hang on as much as you can when you are going through difficult times. 

Another viewer pointed out that the timing was very good for this sculpture with all the ongoing demonstrations driven by the anger over unprecedented levels of social inequality.  Three years after the financial meltdown on Wall Street, unemployment and declining wages persist and deepen alongside record profits and increasing wealth for the top one percent. A person’s fear looking down to an unknown future can also be seen in my figure’s face with a completely different point of view.

Picasso has once said: "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."  My soul after seeing all this beautiful works of art this weekend is now fresher.

My blog on My Sculptures

My goal as an artist is creating timeless art that touches people and captures their imagination.  Rather than creating a photographic likeliness, I aim to bring out the “truth” of a person portrayed with passions, ideals, personal boundaries and desires. To do this I simplify forms and “suggest” rather than “define” what I see and avoid a cold resemblance and too many details.  I also like my work to convey emotions. Emotions are the greatest potential source of uniting human beings and I believe they allow my art to offer a piece of life.

The creation process for me evolves in a couple phases. I believe when creating is in someone’s blood one observes in a different way and becomes more welcoming to conceptual ideas from immediate surroundings. I let ideas grow in me before even exploring ways of turning them into appealing forms.  Then I sculpt. I love every step of it.

Most of my sculptures are bronze which starts with clay, but I also work with stone, cement, resin, plaster and found objects.  I continuously learn from past and present art but try not to limit myself with existing definitions of art.

I have been creating as long as I remember. I started with painting at an early age. When I was first introduced to sculpture at a later period I fell in love with it. I was fascinated at being able to feel what I create.  I feel blessed that I have the time, ability and desire to create and I hope that I can continue creating as long as I live. 

I will be posting my art events and sculpture releases on my blog. 

My web site has more information on me and my sculptures. You may also follow me on my facebook page and my twitter page.