"Above and Beyond: The Magic of Michael Clark"
by Glenn Lawrence
There's been abit of a buzz building up around the opal and gem festivals for the last two or three years; a rumour that something special had come along. Turns out, it wasn't just a rumour.
When you first lay eyes on Michael Clark's opal sculptures it is nothing short of a breathtaking experience. Every aspect of these magnificent pieces, the forms, the balance, the beauty together with the sheer work and patience that they reflect defies superlatives and leaves the viewer more than a little humbled.
Hidden away in the hills behind Queensland's Sunshine Coast, in a lush tropical rainforest of their own making and made up of the most rare and endangered species to be found in Australia, Mick, as he prefers to be known, and Lorrae, his partner and artist in her own right, are literally carving an innovative, bold and adventurous path for themselves in both the opal and the art world.
Under the watch of the awe-inspiring, ancient Glasshouse Mountains, as well as the cheeky scarlet and emerald King Parrots, these two delightful, earthy people invite me into their secret garden. I feel as if I've stepped onto the set of Robinson Crusoe.
Here, raw stones, many of them large, heavy rocks that are covered in iridescent, glittering colours, lie in wait for their turn to undergo both a laborious, and yet miraculously transformation. One that is drawn from a rare and highly intuitive sculptor's eye, along with untold hours, days or even weeks of ardent toil and love that go into the creation of each and every sculpture.
Mick has been an artist of one kind or another for the last 25 years. But it wasn't until he discovered Queensland boulder opal as a medium for sculpture that a profoundly gifted, instinctive talent emerged along with a very daring way of approaching Australia's iconic national gemstone.
"The stone is not an object to dominate or bring into submission or conformity, but rather, a substance with 100 million years of spirit and stories of its own to be revealed and liberated," he tells me, "...an ancient treasure, waiting to be discovered; nature itself, speaking through the stone."
You would imagine when you see the quality of Mick's work, that the tools and machinery which he might employ in liberating such un-earthly beauty would be the best in the business. Yet, true to form, I find that his choice of implements and techniques are anything but high tech and far more about adaptation and achieving the desired result than a need for gadgets or tools. Watching him work, it is very clear that contact, manipulation, familiarity and even intimacy with the stone are absolutely essential to Mick.
In fact, people are invariably in awe not only when they see and hold one of Mick's exquisite pieces, but all the more when they see the relative frugality and humbleness of his studio. He seems to border on making these dazzling, ethereal creations almost with his bare hands.
This is nothing out of character for Mick or Lorrae, though. They built their entire solar powered, highly alternative home completely by hand. They used now power saws, drills or other electric tools of any description. Only hand tools. All materials were carried down a thin, often muddy, 500 metre forest track. They had no choice; there is unlikely to eve be any mains power deep within the rainforest that they call home and which, clearly, has had a profound effect on the creativity levels of these two forest dwellers and the artworks that emanate from deep within.
These days, however, Mick is in full artistic flight and is powered by both the sun and the most high tech (and the quietest) generator he can find.
While most of Mick's pieces are roughly the size of you fist, he explains that, all through the initial phases of carving his often very large rocks, he doesn't know what a piece is going to be like or how it's going to turn out. By carving swirls and curves in layered opal it is a process of coming down to the layers with the most beautiful colour or pattern without making the stone too thin, then playing with those layers to create different effects. All through this process he is acutely aware that, if he goes too far, the shape, or even the piece itself, may begin to deteriorate.
"Then it is finished," he says. "You can't take it any further without breaking the shape down or destroying the sculpture. It is a freeing process. You have no restrictions and there are no worries about doing anything wrong. Allowing for the structure of the opal itself, I just try to go with the shape and the form."
"It's incredible to see what emerges," he continues. "When something starts coming out or begins to show itself, then I give myself over to the flow and the excitement of what is happening. At that point, I am part of the sculpture and completely in the moment, one with the stone," he says in a way that, very much, makes me want to be a sculptor too.
Mick has also had a long and distinguished career as a landscape designer and forester. On this level his reputation precedes him far and wide. While, as an artist, he has worked and excelled in a wide variety of media. He is an adept and highly original oil painter and has sculpted large works in Hebel, sandstone and wood.
However, all this was mere preparation and recent years have seen Mick (and Lorrae) truly in the grip of "opal fever". They are years that have been dedicated solely, and with great passion, to mastering this most radiant of gems as well as the skills necessary to bring it to life.
Each sculpture is also presented in, or on, it's own unique, made-to fit display stand. Deep red cedar is usually used for these but Mick has also used other wood such as mangrove, gidgee and driftwood. These stands or pedestals are beautifully sculpted pieces in themselves and, like the opals, could only have been carved by someone with an intense and deep affinity for the elements of the forest and the earth, the wood and the stone.
Physically though, Mick can only carve so many pieces per year. This limited yearly output makes each sculpture both a highly prized, one of a kind piece as well as part of a small distinct yearly series. Not to mention increasingly in demand as this combines with more people discovering these unusual and highly original pieces.
Respected South Australian opal carver Richard Moser once astutely observed, "Many gem carvers working in abstract forms, remove the garbage, see what the stone looks like and then work with the shape, but most don't go far enough. (Conversely) A lot of carvers take out the impurities, and go for the colour, but the sculpture is not finished, in the sense that much more material could be removed to create a balanced form."
On both counts, Michael Clark goes above and beyond the ordinary and, as a result, achieves the remarkable.
Even the great Michelangelo himself, who, not so coincidentally, is one of Mick's inspirations and has been watching me the whole time form the front of his T-shirt, never got the chance to work in opal. Perhaps if he ever had, he may well have created works similar to those which his namesake is creating right here, today in Australia.
One thing is certain; the same spirit is there.
