Artist Statement

The Mentors

When I was asked to create a group of figures to stand at the entrance to Chancellory House on the UBC campus I thought about the primary purpose of Universities, to gather and store the knowledge of our culture and to pass it on to the students who come there to recieve.

The scholars who work there with this information, the teachers and the researchers and the librarians, are the mentors to whom the students come in their quest for knowledge. In this sense The Mentors are the repository of our culture's knowledge. They are the wise elders at whose feet we go to sit in order to learn, to increase our knowledge, to better ourselves. Our primary means of learning is from others, who have learned before us and pass their knowledge and their wisdom on to us. The Mentors represent
these people to whom we go to learn.

Mentors though are not found exclusively in schools and universities. They are anyone from whom we learn. In fact the first mentors which any of us encountered were our parents. They were the first vectors of cultural information, they taught us how to speak and how to behave, and they sent us on to school to learn more.

When I first found my way to the creation of sculpture, after a career in academic science which culminated in my being a mentor in a medical school, I realized that I had no direct mentors in this domain of artistic endeavor. I could and do learn from creators who have come before me by looking at their work and, more frequently, pictures of their work. But I had no wise elder to whom I could go for direction, either artistic or professional. So I decided I must summon them from within, must root around in that elemental creative ground which we all carry within, to find my artistic direction.

I try to let that which emerges, the creations which come through me, guide me on my way. Thus each creation is a waymarker on my path of exploration, leading me on, and in this sense each becomes a mentor for me.

So The Mentors become mentors to me and also to any other passing student who may look at them and be inspired on their own creative path.