Last week the book authored by me 'Sculpting Angels: Parenting Lessons to Foster Creativity in Children' was released and is available in Amazon. Why is the book titled as 'Sculpting Angels'?
I borrow the idea ‘Sculpting Angels’, from Michelangelo; a great artist and a
great sculptor. Interestingly, the idea does not come from his sculptures but a sonnet that he wrote:
The best of artists hath no art to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include:
To break the marble spell
Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
In simple terms, the poem informs
that the beautiful sculpture had always existed in the uncut marble block. The sculpture
existed even before the sculpting started, even before one parted the marble
block from the larger rock.
This beautiful sculpture, yet
unseen, is a rough stone, waiting to be free of the unwanted part of the rough
stone. Along with the unseen sculpture, there is extra marble, which is not
part of the sculpture. The sculptor chips away all unwanted marble from the
uncut block, and the beautiful sculpture, which is inside the uncut marble
block, emerges. The sculptor does not add anything to the sculpture. He only subtracts and removes what is
unwanted from the uncut stone.
An artist, when he paints, on the
contrary, adds and creates. He starts with a plain canvas. He adds colours, oil
and paint to the canvas to create a picture that was never there before. The picture
was not part of the canvas when he started out. The picture was in the artist’s
mind, gradually transferred into the canvas as a painting.
A child is not a canvas waiting to
become a picture. A child is a miracle, a beautiful sculpture already present,
in an uncut marble block, waiting to emerge. Parents play the role as
sculptors, for the beautiful sculpture to emerge. Firstly, the parent must be
able to see the miracle, the beautiful sculpture, in the as yet, uncut stone.
Will the sculpture be a ballerina or a warrior? How outspread will her arms be?
How broad will his shoulders be? The sculptor needs to see all this, and more,
within the uncut stone. The possibilities as to how beautiful a sculpture one
may sculpt from a given stone are endless; limited only by his imagination,
matching ability, and love for his work of art.
Next, the parent having seen the
beautiful sculpture in her mind’s eye must be careful, while on the task of
sculpting, engaging the chisel and hammer. The parent must not chip away part
of the beautiful sculpture. Having seen a beautiful ballerina in the uncut
stone, the sculptor, if he chips away a part of the marble that should have
been the left forefinger of the ballerina, the sculpture can never be the same
beautiful ballerina that it was meant to be. It would perhaps take shape as a
smaller, shorter ballerina, a ballerina with a different hand posture, or a handicapped
ballerina. Parents, like a sculptor, would therefore need to be careful while
chipping away the stone, in the emergence of the sculpture. Every little work on the marble is
critical to the emergence of the sculpture.
A parent fostering creativity in a
child is thus similar to a sculptor sculpting a sculpture. However, a sculpture
is an inanimate object, and a sculptor aspires in his work of art, an inanimate
beauty. A parent on the other hand aspires for the child to blossom into
someone who would personify love, peace and joy, and partner with our Creator,
in shaping our world to be a better place to live in. That, in short, is to
aspire for the child to grow into an angel. This explains the choice of the
title for this book, ‘Sculpting Angels’.
Do you believe that parenting is like sculpting or like painting? What other imagery would be appropriate for painting. Please give your views and comments.
----------
You may order for a copy of the book from the following links (one for India and another for outside India customers) in Amazon:
http://www.amazon.in/SCULPTING-Angels-Jeyakar-Vedamanickam/dp/1482883732/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481095610&sr=1-1&keywords=Sculpting+Angels
https://www.amazon.com/SCULPTING-Angels-Jeyakar-Vedamanickam/dp/1482883732/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481095610&sr=1-1&keywords=Sculpting+Angels
