Cougar Almost Home II

I live to a large extent in my imagination. Even when I am in bed or eating. A good deal of the time I am thinking about imaginative things. The ability to visualize things in a non-prosaic way. Something like that.
. . .

Our relationship with the primitives is direct. The struggle is in the spirit. That’s the genius of native sculpture . . . their ability to approach the myth that lies beyond the bear or fish to say something about existence. As an artist, I don’t recognize any distinction between us. I’m working in the same area as they did. I suppose you could call that inspiration.

     - Leroy Setziol, at the age of 76, in a letter to a young art student

. . .

“Long before I became an artist, I made a small carving. That gave me the belief I could do it. It was a small little carving. Without really having explored my talents, I just had the feeling that I could do it. And the determination. I was just in love with the whole thing. It would be hard for me to conceive of living otherwise. It is a very fine way to live. It is a wonderful way to live. I like wood a great deal. I am in love with wood. Wood looks good, smells good, feels good. The normal phrase to describe how I have lived might be “self-fulfilling.” But I don’t believe in that. On one level I am a worker like everyone else is a worker, only I deal with different things. Ideas. Spirit. The idea of self-fulfilling doesn’t occur to me. I don’t do it for that reason. I don’t know why I do it exactly. I do these things, oh, I guess, for other people.”

During World War II, Leroy was an army chaplain in the South Pacific. After the war, he was a minister in a lower-class neighborhood in Baltimore.

“I was not a good minister. For lots of reasons. It was a very painful experience. I was glad to get out of it. I am not very reliable. I do the things the way I feel that particular day. But you can’t do that in society. If you work for someone else, you have to do what they tell you to do. And you have to do it when they say to do it. That is not very good for me. You can’t be erratic in a normal job. You have to be dependable. I am not dependable. The idea of working for someone else doesn’t please me very much.”
     - Leroy Setziol, Excepts From Heron Dance Interview

Leroy Setziol carved door.

The chief characteristic of handcrafts is that they maintain by their very nature a direct link with the human heart, so that the work always partakes of a human quality. Machine-made things are children of the brain; they are not very human. 
- Soetsu Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman