On May 4, 1973, Associate Professor of Art Santiago Cal was born blue and not breathing in a small hospital on the western border of Belize, Central America. Forty years later, he’s using his personal experiences and current events to inspire a new body of work titled “Forty Rings.”
“We hit these milestones, and turning 30 wasn’t a big deal to me. Twenty-one wasn’t a big deal. Sixteen was, I guess, because I got my car and some freedom. But Forty just made me reflect on life in a different way,” Cal said. “Going back and not only reflecting in my personal memory, but going through the historical accounts of what occurred politically, socially and planetary or geological, it’s been mind boggling to think that in only 40 years so much has occurred.”
So for each year of his life, Cal is thinking back to the important moments in each year and creating a wooden object that represents an important milestone from that year. Some are personal, and some are national or world events.
He has currently completed seven of the objects and has three more in the works. He has received support from the Hixson-Lied Endowment for the project. There will be 40 total objects in the series, but he is not working chronologically.
“I didn’t want it to be forced, and I didn’t want to have cliché mechanisms to represent certain years,” Cal said. “For example, age two, I can’t remember very much, if anything at all. So when I look back at photographs, I think about where I was at that time and maybe symbolic items that were surrounding me in that environment.”
He also has reduced his scale for these wooden objects.
“Although that might seem like it’s more manageable, it’s turned out to be more time consuming, which is okay, because I don’t want these pieces to just be gestures,” Cal said. “I really want them to be thoughtful, considered and not rushed. And I really do enjoy working at this scale, but it’s taking me a lot longer than I anticipated. With my medium, wood is just stronger when it’s longer, and so I’m dealing with a lot of tiny parts that are constantly breaking that need to be repaired.”
His piece, “Joust” is the prelude for the series. The piece was installed at the Poustinia Land Art Park in Belize earlier this year in the canopy of a tree.
“I was around; I just wasn’t in this world. That’s what ‘Joust’ is about,” Cal said. “I think that one has more to do with my personal reflections like the anticipation of what a father expects of a child. That piece is more about my relationship with my father, and I’m his only son.”
He’s glad the piece resides at the Land Art Park in Belize.
“The environment is the environment I grew up in as a kid and is the environment my Dad grew up in as a child, so for that piece to be there is significant more on a personal level than an informative level that I think a lot of other pieces have,” Cal said.
His piece for 1986, which is currently in progress, deals with the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
“I’ve taken photographs of the explosion itself and tried to carve a 3-D representation of that,” Cal said. “That one definitely has more historic significance. My initial idea behind that was to just explore that moment and my experience of seeing that explosion on TV as a child. I had just moved here to America. It was early in the morning, and all of the teachers had it on TV. It was the first teacher in space project. But the more I found out about Challenger, the more significant the vehicle became. It was also in previous missions and was the vehicle the first American woman astronaut went into space and the vehicle the first African-American astronaut went into space on. It was loaded with significance in those ways prior to the event.”
Some years, like 1981, will present a challenge because so many significant events occurred in that one year—the independence of Belize, the assassination attempts on Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.
“I’m trying to really adhere to that parameter of telling a story from that specific year,” Cal said. “I want it to be chronological once it’s completed, in that sense.”
He is using basswood for his figures.
“This basswood has a real significance to me and to sculpture historically,” Cal said. “We call it basswood in America, but it’s from the Linden tree, which is also limewood. All of the Spanish and northern German Renaissance sculptures are all limewood carvings, so there’s this bit of history’s shoulders that I’m standing on and tagging along with.”
He understands why carvers use basswood.
“It’s an endearing wood to carve,” he said. “It’s not as lush as some hard woods like walnut or cherry or even exotic woods. But at the same time, there’s a softness. And since I’m working figuratively, I really want that.”
He made his first figurative wood carving when he was 20 years old, so he’s been carving for 20 years.
“The first piece, I didn’t know anything about wood carving. I had worked primarily in clay, up that point. The first one was done in mahogany,” he said. “The second piece I made was a life-sized figure in walnut. That taught me never to use that material again just because the grain goes everywhere. I’ve used tulip poplar, which is a great wood, but I like basswood much better. I’ve been working with it for a long time.”
Cal came to the U.S. in 1986. His mother is American and his father is Belizean.
“My mother lived in Belize for 18 years. It was not like a tropical resort during that time,” Cal said. “It was Third World—dirt roads and lots of inconveniences. She wanted us to experience America as well.”
So his entire family moved to America. Cal had been interested in art and painting, but never knew that being an artist was something he could become.
“I never had been to a museum. I hadn’t been to a museum until I was 18,” Cal said.
When he showed up to school in America, they gave him a tour of the school. He was amazed when he came to the art room.
“I thought, ‘Wow, there’s a room just for art?’” Cal said. “And then they showed me all the supplies, and I thought, ‘Oh well, I’ll never be able to afford these.’ And then they said, ‘No, these are the supplies for students to use.’ That was 8th grade. From that moment on, 8th to 12th grade, every moment I was there. I was fortunate to have supportive art teachers who would allow me to go and work there by myself. That was when the fire really took off.”
As he continues work on his Forty Rings project, his 40th year has turned out to be interesting, too. Because of the scale of his work, he’s able to take pieces of the objects home to work on them. This summer, he worked on a piece called “After the Blues,” which depicts a baby cuddled by an army ant, which represents his first year when his mother brought him home from the hospital and discovered a colony of army ants on the move and headed toward their house.
“When I took that piece home for the first time, in progress, my wife said, ‘I think I may be pregnant,’” Cal said. “It was a very odd, surreal moment to be carrying around this wooden baby and to hear that news, and it turned out to be the case. As far as the cycle goes, it wasn’t planned, so I don’t know what year 40 will bring, but I want to wait for that experience to motivate me.”
He has enjoyed the new approach to his work in the Forty Rings project.
“It’s been a very different way for me to approach making,” Cal said. “And at the same time, although it’s narrowed and focused, it’s incredibly expansive. I’ve really enjoyed that part of it.”
Some of the pieces will be shown in Belize this December. The Challenger Space Shuttle piece will travel to Miami for the International Sculpture Conference in December. “After the Blues” is featured in Sheldon Museum of Art’s “Its Surreal Thing: The Temptation of Objects” exhibition on display now through Jan. 5, 2014.
Originally, he intended to complete this project in the calendar year of 2013, but he’s now thinking perhaps of trying to complete it during his birthday year from May 4, 2013, to May 4, 2014.
“I don’t want an artificial deadline,” Cal said. “Then it’s just about a feat. The project itself has made me grow so much. It’s rekindled this fire in me to be in the studio. There are so many things about it that I’ve really enjoyed.”