Faulkner County artist creates sculpture garden
Posted on Monday, July 24, 2006
CONWAY — Leaving Conway and driving west along U. S. 64, motorists pass the city landfill, a water-treatment plant, Cadron Settlement Park and a little-noticed art treasure.
There, on about 2 acres of land, sit Finton Shaw’s welding shop, a big pond, a haven of trees and angel’s trumpet vine — and a sculpture garden of 80 to 100 works of art that Shaw has chiseled, shaped, assembled since the early 1990 s.
Some of Shaw’s sculptures are junk art — pieces combining found objects such as a ramshackle grocery cart, hubcaps and old dishes. Some are fabricated works made from clay, marble, steel, copper and the like. Some offer social commentary, such as The City Where the Great Thinkers Reside, a combination of junk art and fabrication.
The latter work, consisting of steel, concrete and found objects, features a leaning Statue of Liberty amid concrete, plastic skeletons, a broken oil lamp, a once-elegant pitcher, a rusted tobacco tin and other items. Touring his garden last week, Shaw told the story behind this work, its sculpted steel rising toward the sky.
“I did this six months before 9 / 11,” he recalled. “The statue doesn’t really relate to New York; it relates to our liberties.”
He remembered the developer of an area subdivision once saying, “‘ We’ve got to get rid of that g ****** trailer trash. ’ I said, ‘ Where would you have them go ?’”
Too often, Shaw said, he’s seen a lack of concern for “the hardworking, poor people even though they worked their blood, sweat and tears putting these cities together.”
On this sweltering July day, Shaw wore his long, blondishgray hair in a ponytail over a sleeveless red shirt. At 59, he has been married six times.
“None of them appreciated my art,” he said of his former wives.
His current wife, Karyn, “wondered” about it “in the early part of the relationship” but is supportive now, he said.
She makes the plaques describing each sculpture. She’s also the pretty, nude woman featured in two oils Shaw painted and has hanging in his nearby office.
Shaw’s to-do list of sculptures included a bust of Conway Mayor Tab Townsell; he has raised about $ 1, 000 of the $ 2, 500 he says he needs for the project.
Shaw’s appearance, his life, his art, his stated concern for the common man, all seem to reflect the life of a one-time hippie. Not so, he said.
“I was strait-laced,” he recalled. “My mother thought I might turn out to be a preacher. I fooled her.”
As a youngster, Shaw, who grew up in England, Ark., made mud statues of women when he was working in the rice fields for his uncle.
“I didn’t know much about what a woman looked like,” he said. “But I had an idea.”
Shaw repeatedly noted that he’s not educated in the arts. (He studied political science for a time after high school. )
“I’m self-taught. I studied on my own,” he said.
His office shelves are lined with books on art and artists, from Michelangelo to Salvador Dali. He refers to mythology almost in passing, with some reflected in his works: an Egyptian cross that he said symbolized eternity is one.
His garden also includes a sculpture reflecting characteristics of Spanish surrealist Joan Miro’s paintings.
Perhaps most important, Shaw sees art in everyday objects.
Consider cow bones, which Shaw used in the Miro sculpture.
“To me, bones are fabulous creations,” he said. “We just relate them too much to death.”
Or the curved metal legs of a chair. Shaw uses them to represent the curved torso of a woman in Girl Shopping. Her head is a light bulb; her hat, a tiny shade; her breasts, small gelatin molds.
“I just saw the curvature of the chair legs, and it reminded me of a woman’s figure.... I look at things and I see art.”
Others sculptures such as The Gardener, a steel-and-copper creation, simply illustrate — in this case flowers of metal and a hubcap that’s also a bird feeder.
A few are erotic and offer a glimpse into the artist’s sense of humor.
Some are offbeat: Three-Legged Horse with Underbite, for example.
Stopping at a large metal creation combining wagon wheels, bicycle parts, mirrors and a trumpet, Shaw smiled and said, “This is actually a sex machine. I call it The Chariot.”
Then there’s the totally asexual wind-operated pendulum, labeled The Sometime Keeper, made from an oil can connected to a wheel-turned clock face.
Though Shaw was already working with clay, he didn’t get into metal sculptures until another Conway artist, Gene Hatfield, stopped by one day in 1991 or 1992 and noticed all the scrap iron he had.
“He said you need to be doing this,” Shaw said. “I said I don’t understand that stuff. He said there’s nothing to understand; you just do it.”
Shaw’s garden consists mainly of his larger sculptures and a few of Hatfield’s. Shaw has about 30 smaller creations, including exquisitely sculpted human forms. Most are in his office and he keeps a few at home. Shaw, who prices his works from $ 400 to $ 3, 000, has displayed some in Little Rock galleries and has sold some from his Web site, www. fintonsculpture. com.
Hatfield, a sculptor and painter and professor emeritus of art at the University of Central Arkansas, is impressed with Shaw’s versatility.
“He works in all media,” and his art reflects a “wide range of subject matter.”
“[Shaw ] has educated himself and knows a lot more about the art of the past than most people who study it,” Hatfield said.
He called Shaw’s sculpture garden “the brightest spot in Conway that nobody knows anything about,” then added, “He has some of his best works there on the highway, but you have to get back in there to see the real treasure.”
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