What Clothing Means in My Sculpture

Clothing in my sculpture is symbolic of more subtle kinds of psychological packaging with which we assert and defend ourselves. The overcoat, the outward manner, the pose, the profession, the front, the outward signs of what the person within wants to be known as. It would be simplistic to consider the images which people project of themselves as mere false fronts intended to deceive others. Often the only person deceived by the false front is the person wearing it.

Who among us doesn’t need a few rags to cover his nakedness?

All communication between people requires the use of symbols. The deepest most genuinely felt emotions, the most clearly seen inner visions cannot be communicated from one person to another without some form of symbolism being used. It is the relationship between reality and symbol which fascinates me. The fact that the symbol may or may not tell the truth about the person using it makes it all the more interesting. Clothing is symbolic as well as functional.

Clothing As Metaphor: Text

The fact that the symbol may or may not tell the truth about the person using it makes it all the more interesting. Clothing is symbolic as well as functional.

Clothing As Metaphor: Image

As expressions of reality, symbols can say too little or too much. What primitive mask can adequately express the savagery of which some are capable? How many would be able to stand the rough rural life which their faded blue jeans symbolize?

I’m interested in the man inside the overcoat, in what he thinks of himself in relationship to his fellows. His “overcoat" both binds him to the crowd and protects him from it. The top coat simplifies the individuality of each figure in the crowd allowing the crowd itself to take on a visual unity of its own.

The relationship between transitory fashions and our primitive, instinctual, emotional, cultivated, aspiring, intuitive, and intellectual inner lives is reflected in great works of art of all periods. One tends to forget that most great monumental works of the past were once fairly accurate descriptions of the way people dressed, the implements they used, the activities they engaged in. The fact that through individual or collective genius, artists of the past were able to integrate ephemeral elements of subject matter peculiar to their time, in timeless sculpture and painting, should lead us to hope that we too may produce images which both reflect the life around us and achieve a degree if universality.

Clothing As Metaphor: Text

The overcoat, the outward manner, the pose, the profession, the front, the outward signs of what the person within wants to be known as.

Clothing As Metaphor: Image

I wish to creat works which, through the use of carefully edited details, relate to here and now, and yet, through purely sculptural qualities, speak convincing long after these details of fashion are no longer current.

My aim is to communicate at several levels simultaneously. Representational elements, narrative qualities, humour, are at the most approachable level. Suggestions of underlying psychological significance, primitive motivations, relationship to archetypes are at a more symbolic level. Allegorical, fantastical, religious qualities are hidden in the commonplace. All of these humanistic concerns are of relatively little lasting value if the sculpture is not good in its own terms. I am not a professional journalist, philosopher, psychologist or sociologist. I am a sculptor. Sculpture is my language.

By being open to life around me and reflecting upon it in my work, I communicate with other people about shared experiences. By being a sculptor and using the language of sculpture, I put my reflections as a twentieth century Canadian into a more universal form.

William McElcheran

Clothing As Metaphor: Text

What Clothing Means in My Sculpture

The fact that the symbol may or may not tell the truth about the person using it makes it all the more interesting. Clothing is symbolic as well as functional.

As expressions of reality, symbols can say too little or too much. What primitive mask can adequately express the savagery of which some are capable? How many would be able to stand the rough rural life which their faded blue jeans symbolize?

The overcoat, the outward manner, the pose, the profession, the front, the outward signs of what the person within wants to be known as.

I wish to creat works which, through the use of carefully edited details, relate to here and now, and yet, through purely sculptural qualities, speak convincing long after these details of fashion are no longer current.

By being open to life around me and reflecting upon it in my work, I communicate with other people about shared experiences. By being a sculptor and using the language of sculpture, I put my reflections as a twentieth century Canadian into a more universal form.William McElcheran

By being open to life around me and reflecting upon it in my work, I communicate with other people about shared experiences. By being a sculptor and using the language of sculpture, I put my reflections as a twentieth century Canadian into a more universal form.

William McElcheran