ANGEL ALOFT - Angel Orensanz

Blake accused Angels of having no sense of humour; and G. K. Chesterton said that laughter can get you to the Gate of Heaven - but not through it. Clearly, neither of them had met Angel Orensanz; a creative trickster who, in 1966, launched a career as a sculptor. More recently, he founded the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York, to host choirs, film crews and artists, both visual and performing, from around the world.

Orensanz's indoor and outdoor sculpture and his personality reflect a constant flair for dramatic expression and living fully in the moment. Once, for instance, when a call to church services cleared Moscow's Red Square for a mere two hours, he assembled a bamboo sculpture in the area entirely unannounced! The sculpture was installed and photographed without his being apprehended. In his sculpture, he often juxtaposes classical form and improvisation. Unconventional and traditional materials are united with his trademark statements of lyrical movement in line, form and space.

Orensanz is portrayed here holding one of his gigantic flute forms, garbed in flowing robes of Canadian pine boughs, posed for an ecstatic performance of living. This sculpture is also significant because Orensanz applied his own hand to the final texture.

Like antlers, like veins of the brain, the birches
Mark patterns of mind on the red winter sky;
'I am thought of all plants' says the Green Man,
'I am thought of all plants' says he.

-- From The Green Man, The Archetype of Our Oneness With The Earth
by William Anderson and C

© 2001. The Arkangel Project.