“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”

The detachments from the normal restraints of time are what allows us to delve into the depths of the human spirit of this antique fisherman. He is old, he is wrinkled, rumpled and mysterious. This is a sculpture about memory, the old Ancient Mariner and ours.

If we could smell him we would note hints of diesel, fish– of course, fish– fresh and rotting, clams, oysters, cheap bars, rain soaked Indian villages, nicked old green wooden bunks, damp grey blankets, bilge and of course, Jack Daniels whiskey.

His body is encrusted with the experiences of his life. Similarly, in and on each of us, are the reminiscences of our life’s experiences. Perhaps a fractured bone, now healed, a place of warmth and love from a memory. Maybe a wrinkled brow from a troubled relationship. Look in the mirror it’s all there.

With this work I seek to capture the inner vibrations of the essence of his existence. His body, like a bit of drift on the beach is comprised of disparate parts of the sea, his sea, his life. Who can gaze upon this torso and not say why? Green seaweed drifts backwards and forwards with the tide.

What we see are his experiences which really are manifestations of his afterlife. Hanging off of his right shoulder are heavy steel chains, anchor chains? His left shoulder is hammered and filled with nails, washers, screws and bolts, and a key to what?

Each nail represents an event in this ancient mariner’s life indeed each object hanging off of his torso represents moments from his life.

Perhaps, with his hand plane he curled off fragrant shavings of Port Orford cedar for a plank on his boat, then taking a nail from his mouth he deftly drove it into the fresh airdried plank attaching it to the hull. He is wise.  He knows his timbers must be air dried. Or maybe one of those washers is for the engine, he remembers he tore the skin off of his knuckles, they bled through the black engine oil covering his hands.  During his whole life his shoulder always hurt especially with all of the nails and the history they represent, which are driven there.

He is the image of his history. He is his history. He has a ships wheel over his heart, his wheel his direction. He has stood countless hours his hands firmly griping the wheel. Standing at the wheel he controlled the motion and course of his boat as he labored up the inside passage to Alaska and the fishing grounds.

Crossing Queen Charlotte Sound, he recalls– he remembers it in his body, his boat rising on towering swells from the open Pacific Ocean off to his port, he was slammed into the table in the wheel house and broke two ribs, while the bow dove so deep into the chaotic sea that only the wheel house was above the white and green foaming ocean, he remembers that because it is remembered by his bones and flesh. We, each of us, remember, our bones have memory, our muscles have memory, our brains remember.

He remembers the call from his son, his wife has died, she asked him, no pleaded with him, not to go north, she had a funny feeling.

Conglomerates, bits and pieces of sealed life’s experiences are in his body, like a conglomerate rock, made up of many small rocks. He shouldn’t have left but the sea, his other wife, even more demanding, sounded her alluring siren call to him, and he had to go. It was early spring, the Indian plum was blooming, the other boats were leaving, was he to sit on the beach? He remembered thinking he wasn’t so old as to not ever fish again, he never looked in a mirror.

Our bronze torso shows our fisherman as old, he is creaky, he used to walk with a roll, like running broadside to the sea, now he shambles. His boots are cracked, they even leak, his old Helly-Hansen is just that, old and thread bare in places, the dock he stands on is rotten. Memory is more indelible than ink and bronze even more so.

So here stands his past, and old fisherman now an icon, but he doesn’t know it.

Years ago, while we were sleeping, he was up before dawn, laying out nets in all manner of wind, rain and foul weather in a thousand kinds of rain and sea, each its own heaven or hell.

His boat at black night hanging on her anchor cable, leaping from wave to wave, our old man of the sea playing cribbage and eating hardtack while the North Pacific sweeps the black hull, family and friends far away, an aching thumb, a throbbing shoulder, no sleep.

How do you factor that into the price of a can of Salmon?

– Douglas Granum, Sculptor