by Rand E Oertle

Created on: March 21, 2009   Last Updated: March 26, 2009

Confronting The Big Tree

I stood staring at the monster before me. It was about seventeen feet in diameter at the base and cut off at twenty-five feet tall. Even at twenty-five feet the diameter of the tree was more than four feet. I'm guessing this huge tree started growing about 350 years ago. The problem was that it wound up right in the middle of the main road through Tahoe City, California, in the High Sierras. It had to be cut and moved and the townspeople wanted to have it carved.

I have carved for fifty-four years and for twenty-two years I sculpted full-time using a chainsaw. I've carved and sold more than 3,000 individual sculptures. Most of my major projects were on Lake Tahoe's west shore. Just at the end of my career, I won a design contest to sculpt that double-trunked behemoth called "The Big Tree" in Tahoe City. That was my monster and it seemed to stare back at me and ask "do you really think you have the creativity to handle me?"

It was as if the nature of creativity hit me like a hammer. God's creativity was evident as the Big Tree grew during its life. Would my contribution measure up? The question of what exactly creativity is, began to dominate my thoughts and demand a definition. As the mind is wont to do, mine didn't want to let me rest until I had given it my definition of creativity.

After some very restless nights, I determined that the essence of creativity is the manipulation of mind, movement and materials. All creativity flows from that manipulation and the quality of the manipulation is what establishes value, while time is the great refiner of the process.

The time factor was illustrated in the life of Vincent Van Gogh, considered today as one of history's greatest painters, who sold precisely one painting during his entire life time. Yet, exactly one hundred years after his death in 1890, a Japanese collector in 1990 paid a record $82.5 million dollars for Van Gogh's "Portrait of Doctor Gachet." That auction lasted three-and-a-half minutes. Time was the mitigating factor. Unfortunately for Van Gogh, he wasn't privileged to see his creativity confirmed, although it was intrinsic in his paintings.

Acclaimed American Indian painter R. C. Gorman was asked by Good Morning America reporter Steve Fox what he liked to see best when he finished a painting. Fox was expecting an esoteric explanation concentrating on the nature of art. Gorman paused, looked off into the distance and replied, "the customer pulling his wallet out." That may sound

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>