I recieved this book for free in exchange from the author for an honest review. This is no way at all affected my opinions which are my own. Thank you.
I am an artist. I am a lover of life. I am a reader. Shaping Destiny is the story of one women who is also an artist. I still don't know if she is a lover of life, but she is a lover of art.
While I didn't agree with everything she wrote (I'll get to that), there is certain wisdom in this book. I'd like to share it with yall. Here.
"Sculpture came from the root sculpere--to carve or alter. There was also a reference to the term "shelf" in the dictionary and when I looked it up something clicked. I imagined an ocean shelf, carved and altered by the shifting sea."
"I was working on a piece trying to understand love--how to hold it and find solace within it. I couldn't get there. I found only that the connection we strive for when we love--the touching beyond body and into the soul--was impossible for me...Love isn't fixed or solid. It requires work--struggle and desire, hope and memory, a momentary pause in intimacy and then the effort to go again, fight again, touch again, and dream again."
"I rigged another shop lamp to the ceiling and the light shone down the empty spiral of the form, illuminating its center...The sculpture was positioned so that my gaze rested on the lower half of the letter A and there was a trickle of light that flowed like water down one of the legs. My eyes followed the light up the leg and behind the line that crossed the triangle into the interior or the work..The form of Faith was dark, a shadow. The light existed only in the negative space of the interior...Faith is a solid object and we exist inside it as the thing that cannot be defined. The relationship was important, but not in the way we had thought. Faith defines us, but not the other way around. Faith is. We become. And we are capable of becoming only in faith. Faith is the vessel that contains the free-flowing substance that is us."
"Grief is not about what you didn't get. It is about what you didn't give."
Now that I have shared this with yall, I will move on to what I disagree with. For Shaping Destiny is almost a discussion, an invitation to think and challenge the artist's mind. So I share my thoughts.
Shaping Destiny is the story of a woman's soul. Bare. Real. Bold. It's unlike anything I have ever read. Yet there are hints of humanness, and how we are all flawed. And here I do the human thing, I judge, I play the critic. I am aware of this.
"I let them scrape and suck the child out of me..."
It is a poverty that a child must die so that you can live as you wish. --Mother Theresa
"Faith does NOT become." Oh, Destiny Allison, if you think this, then I think you don't understand faith very well. Because faith DOES become.
I've seen it.
All I have left to say is that Shaping Destiny, ultimately, revealed to me that Destiny Allison does NOT understand the meaning of life and faith. Although, I give her art credit--she IS an artist. Her sculptures will make you think, because art is subjective. The meaning of a piece if different to every person who looks at it, which is different from that of the artist's. And the piece only has meaning because someone gives it meaning. It is that way in art. If you create it, you give it meaning. If you see it you give it meaning. The meaning lies in your thoughts.
Allison's online gallery here: http://www.destinyallison.com/
The book trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itsPByhj-qI
