When my roommate, Nikhil, announced he was going to Mauritius for three months and asked if I could take care of his dog, I thought immediately of body heat. A 70-pound German shepherd throws off a lot of warmth, and I sleep in a poorly insulated room.
“Can he sleep in the bed?” I asked.
“He’s not really supposed to, but…”
“Done,” I said. “When do you leave?”
To New Haven sculptor Dennis Sparling, “art is about the mystery of things.”
Sparling, 67, fabricates sheet copper and wire into dynamic sculpture. Last year, Sparling finished work on his 9-foot-tall, 600-pound representation of Leonardo daVinci. The sculpture integrates daVinci’s drawings and paintings with his feats of engineering, architecture, and anatomy – all ranged around the standing patriarch.
My 22-year-old nephew Michael is both philosophical and artistic in nature. I describe him as contemplative and creative. He has also spent essentially his whole life within a short drive of mountains and trout streams. He has lived with his family in Colorado, Maine, western North Carolina and Alaska. He spent three years in Addison County at Middlebury College and another year studying abroad in mountainous Chile.
