y second sculpture, “Monk,” shows the dual nature of man. One half of the face is rugged, tough even, while the other is meditative, prayerful, indicating the spirituality and force which exist simultaneously in the human soul.
I was an altar boy as a child and deeply religious at that time and though I no longer attend the Catholic Church, my religious inclinations are still prevalent. On the other hand, I come from a family of boxers and I, myself, fought as an amateur and was a boxing coach at University of California, Berkeley, for fifteen years. My fiction, as well as my art, explores this duality –man as both physical and spiritual creature.
In my world view, the physical man must fight to protect the spiritual man from a world hostile to both. Hence, the truly spiritual are the toughest of all beings. The two halves of the monk’s mournful face, the unsentimental apprehension of reality as it really is in the hooded eyes, yet the resolution toward piety, reflect this conviction.