Wood & Stone Sculptures

By Eleanor Kennelly

      He started with a jackknife, carving small pieces of wood for a mobile to decorate an empty apartment. But Robert Babcock's collegiate whim signaled a fascination with form that jags like veiny alabaster -- now a thick band, sometimes a pronounced line -- through his adult life.

      Able, finally, to apply himself intensely to sculpture when he moved to Washington in 1991, Mr. Babcock has created a marvelous oeuvre in wood and stone in a notably short time.

      Working in the tradition of masters like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, for whom simplicity and the singing stone itself, somehow, guide the artist's hand, Mr. Babcock rarely indulges in pure abstraction. There is usually a natural or human element suggested by his finished piece, sending the viewer's mind on the course of narrative.

      The artist terms this process "gestalt sculpture." He explains, "I like to give portions of an idea, or portions of a figure, to let another person finish the thought."

      So "Zeus" (1993), with its strong male chest and dimpled thighs in inky black soapstone, suggests authority, potency, fatherhood. Partial as a figure, though, it is almost entirely an act of imagination to find these attributes.

      A female analog in alabaster, the award-winning "Femme Fatale" (1991), reduces a woman to breasts and hips, no doubt. The silky stone passage from one shape to another gives the piece a tone of reverence that a cold description of the subject can not convey.

      Many of Mr. Babcock's carvings can be upended, angled, and repositioned like an infant's toy or a mental puzzle. "The Wave" (1991) and "Introspection" (1993) have this playful variability which is also a metaphor for the mutual act of creativity. The artist makes irrevocable decisions when sculpting the block, this artist seems to be saying. And the play of meaning is preserved by the viewer's response.

      These two pieces also represent the sophisticated relationship between absence and presence in Mr. Babcock's work.

      The hollow green circle of river's edge soapstone - "The Wave" -encloses nothingness, wherein lies its form. The two holes carved in "Introspection" are like handles to grip from one view, like eyes from the other side: Something to take, look again, something that takes you.

      This ambivalence, or multivalence, is what gives Mr. Babcock's work a contemporary aspect.

      Even a direct, elegant piece like "Diver" (1990) is more than what it seems. Cut from one wood block, the looping figure is an ode to human capability and aspiration as it mimics the perfect form of a champion diver. So finely carved, it is also a study in fragility as the arc could hardly be cut a fraction more without breaking.

      It is a mystery how an unfixed shape can carry feeling. Why the roundness of "Animal Instinct" (1992) is polarly warm, while the slant of "The Silent Sail" (1992) is stoic", it is a mystery why we are moved by these forms. We are, moved to pleasure and to wonder.