interview

Interview of Traci Slatton & Sabin Howard on Bookpleasures.com

Great interview, great questions!!

What fun!

Norm Goldman, B.A. LL.L, is the Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures, which he created in 2002.’ Practicing law for over 35 years enabled Norm to transfer and apply to book reviewing his many skills that he had perfected during his career in the legal profession and as a result he became a prolific free lance book reviewer & author interviewer.

Norm:

What motivated you to write The Art of Life and what was your creative process like? What happened before you sat down to write the book? What do you hope to accomplish with the book?

Traci:

Sabin is always talking about art, and what contemporary art lacks: rigor, grounding in the great historical tradition, and beauty. A lot of art right now is just silly–especially sculpture, which tends to be tschotchkis, ridiculous balloon animals, or oversized toys. Sabin brims with passion to change the art world and to bring back the rigor of craft and the good feelings and uplift that great art inspires. The process of writing the book revolved around us sitting down at the dining room table and me listening to Sabin. (And boy, can he go on about art!) Then I would do research, reading books that we discussed and making trips to museums with Sabin. Finally, I would write. Sabin would add and revise. I would rewrite.

It’s not so easy to write a book with one’s husband; names might have been called, objects might have been thrown!

What we hope to accomplish is to spread the word in the art world: “The emperor has no clothes.” Then we want to suggest the alternative to people: beautiful art made with passion, integrity, and superb technique.

Sabin:

Currently the norm in the art world is the decimation of the difference between “art world” and “real world,” there is no difference. I was brought up to believe that art is sacred; once you look past the picture frame, you look into an elevated world. Or if you look at a sculpture on a pedestal, it’s lifted up off the ground. So art is not “real” but more about what can be. I wanted to write this book because education is so important in how you look at art. Art works on many levels, but principally, art’s main function is VISUAL. So the book is a way to educate people about the importance of our rich historical past and how that’s not something to be thrown out. 

This rich historical past talks about us as human beings. Figurative art should always be present in the art world because it represents us on a cultural level, as well. Since the art represents us as humans, it should represent our best parts, not our isolation and devolution, as modern art does. Modern art is a desensitization of our humanity and a discontinuation of our rich past.

I realized when I spoke to all my clients that the more they learned about the depth of the art, the more they become intrigued and passionate about sculpture. After twenty years of teaching, I realized my ideas could reach a broader audience with a book.

Norm:

Sabin, you have had quite an eventful career, what influenced your evolution as a sculptor?

Sabin:

 I didn’t start off my life knowing that I would be an artist. It came to me on October 19th, 1982 in a grungy wood shop in South Philly, where I was working after having dropped out of college. I decided that afternoon that my life was going nowhere and I had to do something radically different. I decided at that moment: I would become an artist.

This did not come out of a vacuum but was the direct result of having grown up in Italy and having experienced Michelangelo and all the great cathedrals of Europe as a child. I knew that great art was something sacred. I knew that it took great skill and learning to create an art that changed people inside. When you are 19, the sky is the limit. Anything is possible. With an urgency to set out on that path, I enrolled in the following fall in the nearby art school, Philadelphia College of Art, and this is where I met my teachers and mentors Martha and Walter Erlebacher. I had zero interest in the current art world and showed no respect for other teachers who told me that the Renaissance was something from the past.  I knew that the feeling one got when viewing this type of art was timeless.  I obsessively looked at Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. Everywhere I went I carried a book under my arm. It was a template for me to follow. I knew instinctively that I had to learn specific information from the Erlebachers so that I would have the tools to make “real art.” Art was part of another world that you looked into. It was divided from this world by a picture frame, or elevated about the ground on a pedestal. Great skill was involved and not everyone was capable of doing it.

I spent 15 years learning my craft. I learned the nuts and bolts of creating an art form that would be seen as “awesome” and carry with it a startling presence. I became fascinated with the variety  of body types and poses available to me as a sculptor. I learned that each human being carries a unique soul and life experience within their  body and this energy manifests itself externally in the morphology and demeanor of the each individual. This uniqueness can be found in each individual part and how all those parts fit together to make the whole. Once I had gained mastery in the ability to design and compose exactly what I saw in life, I took the next step in choosing what story I wanted the body to tell. The variety of  energies that I could choose to  depict in each sculpture became the next step in my artistic process.

There is an internal pressure within the body that always pushes outward in a convex fashion. This internal pressure shows the unique spirit or soul of each individual; no two people are exactly alike. Using anatomy to translate this life force energy into sculptural terms, I learned to recreate this pressure within my bronzes, giving them the fullness of energy and presence of a unique human being.

Because my work is about showing man at his full potential, I began recruiting several models to create each piece. This part of my process allowed me to pick and choose the body parts to sculpt a unique morphology that  best narrates the story and character that I am presenting. In this process of creation, I use my understanding of anatomy and I structure of the human body to organize the figure. The spiraling of muscles over the architectural  foundation of the skeleton has become my grammar in telling a story that speaks to the human condition. As I evolved as a human being, my art evolved in a parallel fashion. The work I did in the 90’s with the seated figures and fragmented torsos exemplified my own struggles and stress, and this is why I gravitated towards that subject matter. Thus my art is, on one level, a visual record of my internal growth. The sculptures are an energetic evolution of my own experience and history. In the last 15 years, the energy of my sculptures has metamorphasized from figures that are closed and pressed down by gravity, to figures that carry an expansive energy with an open heart. The poses have become more elegant and graceful, taking on god-like proportions. The transitions between limbs flow with greater harmony. And the hierarchy of parts fit together with an ease suggesting a greater sense of wholeness. My vision as an artist has evolved from one of oppression and struggle to a realization that the universe is full of grace available to all those willing to open their eyes in the creation of the life of their own choosing.

Norm:

Traci, who has written about your books and Sabin’s sculptures and how do you view their perspectives, opinions, and comments?

Traci:

My books are all over the internet, specifically with book review bloggers (who are very influential!), and fortunately have received some wonderful reviews. Of course, there are always less stellar reviews. My attitude toward those can be expressed in one word: “Next.” But I also try to learn from critical reviews, so that the next book is better. There’s always room for growth! 

Sabin’s sculptures have been written about by several art critics, notably James Cooper and Peter Trippi. Jim is a great admirer of Sabin’s work and sees the potential for art to uplift and transform people. He has been a wonderful supporter of Sabin’s rather lonely efforts.

But it’s not just art critics who admire Sabin’s work. Once Sabin was moving the Aphrodite out of his studio into a moving van, and she was on the street for a while. People from all walks of life walked up or drove up in cars to gawk. They were teachers, firemen, trash collectors, shop keepers, lawyers, mothers pushing carriages–Sabin had a wonderful hour of fielding questions from people whose only commonality was that they were struck by his sculpture’s beauty. He came home and told me about this, and all I could think was, “This is what great art should do: magnetically draw people in, all people, from the PhD to the high school drop-out!” We intuitively feel and recognize mastery.

Sabin:

The critics who have written about me are very positive about what I am doing. It reinforces the importance of doing something vital in the art world. 

 

ParaYourNormal – Where Para is our Normal!: Interview with Traci Slatton: Hey, Traci! I’m so excited to have this opportunity to get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself that’s not on your site . I l…

 

 

Interview with Traci Slatton

Hey, Traci! I’m so excited to have this opportunity to get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself that’s not on your site.  

I love sci-fi movies, sitcoms, horse-back riding, and yoga; Cape Cod and Rome are my two favorite places in the world, with Paris coming up close behind them; Chocolate is one of my reasons for incarnating in the physical body; my husband sculptor Sabin Howard makes the most best shrimp scampi; “For fun and profit” is my usual answer when my kids, those opinionated creatures, ask “Why?”; 3^rd Rock from the Sun is my favorite TV show and “Whom the Gods would Destroy” by Richard Powell is my favorite novel; Giotto, Cimabue, Raphael and Chagall are my favorite artists; I think the first TERMINATOR was a perfect movie; I love my dogs, my kids, my friends, sometimes my husband, sunshine, daisies, yellow roses, trees, time by the ocean, and teasing the people I’m close to.

So you’re from a Navy family. I am soooooo sorry! *helpless shrug* However, I must say that my Marine Corps father wasn’t too thrilled when I joined the Army. His only consolation was that I hadn’t joined the Navy. LOL!! How do you think your ingrained military background affects your writing,? 

Your dad was a jarhead? Just joking! I have to defend my dad a little. J Being in a military family gave me an opportunity to experience two things: 1, the idea that service to our country is important, worthy, and honorable—which I think the current generation does not understand; and 2, moving around between cultures. The South is different from the Midwest which is distinct from the Northeast, here in the US. I got to understand at a gut level that there are different and equally valid ways of being in the world. I live now on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which has its own specific culture, and it astonishes me how so many folks here have an unconscious arrogance about their political beliefs and attitudes, as if theirs was the only intelligent way to live.

You were accepted into Yale in your junior year?! I’m feeling my brain cells shriveling already! LOL! I bet your prose just roll of the tongue in an almost musical sort of way. How did the other kids treat you when you were accepted? 

I think about 10% of my class at Yale was young, having skipped at least one grade. It wasn’t uncommon. My high school classmates already thought I was weird and a brainiac. Sigh. I was just very passionate about becoming a writer, and thus getting the education I needed for that goal.

How did you get started as a healer? What drew you to this? 

I was and am on a spiritual journey. I have never been able to get away from a profound sense of the Imminent. This is not at all related to religion, in my mind. To me, religion is a social/cultural construction that was formulated to ensure secular control by the priestly and aristocratic classes. At best, it’s a structure in which to live a family life and raise children with values about kindness, honesty, generosity, and integrity. At worst, it stifles free thinking, creativity, and the direct experience of the divine. Now, the Divine itself, whatever it is, fascinates me, and constantly taps me on the shoulder. I also have a deep sense of the suffering of others, and a wish to see them released from it.

Let’s talk about your book a bit, shall we? LOL! What is it called and what is it about? 

I have two paranormal novels out very recently: FALLEN, which is the first in a romantic trilogy set during the end times, the AFTER Trilogy; and THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR, which is a playful romp through the art history byways of vampire lore. FALLEN is a dystopian love story, a tale of survivors in a ravaged world who are haunted by strange psychic gifts and devastating mists that have killed billions of people. TBA is about a frisky art forger trying to go straight while she searches for her missing father and a fabled lost painting. She’s pursued by lethal vampires and falls for a half-souled vampire who can’t consummate their passion.

What inspired this book? 

FALLEN came to me as a situation: a man and a woman, each with secrets, who fall in love despite themselves, and can’t be together. I had a sense of the intensity of their longing for each other. I felt their despair and their tenderness in the face of cataclysm and death, and I always knew it would take 3 books to tell their story. TBA came to me as Laila’s voice, which I found intriguing. She’s strong, tempted, kind-hearted, quirky, a bit zany, goofy, idiosyncratic, hot-blooded. I could hear her in my head.

Tell us something about your characters that we wouldn’t be able to figure out by reading the book. 

Emma the female protagonist of FALLEN will loose everything before she gains everything; Laila in TBA has a dark and vengeful side.

Is there a book 2 in the works? Can you tell us a bit about it? 

The second book in the AFTER Trilogy is called COLD LIGHT, and I am working on it now. Emma is back in Canada and her oldest daughter Beth gets kidnapped by a rogue band, so she sets out to rescue Beth. Laila shows up in THE CODEX CAPER looking for a Mayan Codex that heralds the end of the world, while also pursuing vengeance for her father’s murder. Laila meets a dashing hedge fund manager named Chris Davenport who tries to seduce her away from John Bolingbroke.

Where can readers purchase your book? 

FALLEN and THE BOTTICELLI AFFAIR are everywhere on the internet! Barnesandnoble.com, Amazon, as ebooks on Amazon, iTunes, smashwords and barnesandnoble.com. Readers can also find the recently released and very gorgeous sculpture book, THE ART OF LIFE, which I wrote with my husband classical figurative sculptor Sabin Howard. THE ART OF LIFE has over 100 color photos, and it surveys figurative sculpture from the earliest times to now, showcases the work of Greek sculptors like Polykleitos and Kritios as well as Renaissance and Baroque masters Donatello, Michelangelo, and Bernini, the great Neo-Classicist Canova and the modernist Rodin, culminating in the work of modern day master Sabin Howard. THE ART OF LIFE touches on the philosophy of art and why beauty is important. There’s a lovely back section that shows Sabin’s figure drawings, from which he taught for 16 years. It’s like looking at Da Vinci’s or Raphael’s drawings!

Where can your readers connect with you on the web? 

They can find me at http://www.tracilslatton.com, at www.tracilslatton.blogspot.com, and at www.parvatipress.com  They can find out more about my husband Sabin and his work at www.sabinhoward.com