Interview

David: So there was something about using your whole body that made it more attractive?

Edmund: Yes, that was a very important part of it. I knew that I was going to have a new phase in my life, and what I had avoided doing in my early years, I could do now.

David: Meaning being really true to your art, instead of looking for a commercial outlet?

Edmund: That’s right. I could live the bohemian life more. You could put the system down, ignore it, take your chances, and go for it.

David: How do you think the environment of Big Sur helped to inspire that in you?

Edmund: Well, I adore beauty. Let’s face it – this place is drenched in it. I’ve come to call it a suburb of Olympus. (Laughter)

David: You talked at the beginning of the interview about how you’re something of a chameleon; that you take on your surroundings. So you wanted then to mimic the beauty of the environment?

Edmund: That’s right, of course. I wanted to do something that expressed an intense sense of beauty, and release that energy that I had to keep putting out, just in a new way.

David: Whenever you would start a piece, did you know where it was going?

Edmund: No.

David: It would sometimes just form as you were doing it?

Edmund: Just the way it is when you write something. You take an absolutely blank mass, then you take the first word, and that leads to the second word. The second word leads to fifteen words. Fifteen lead to forty-five, right?

David: Yeah, it develops as you are going.

Edmund: Yes, and somewhere along the line you get a picture of where you are going.

David: Has this been the case with every one of your pieces?

Edmund: No, absolutely not. But I prefer doing it that way. Being a totally visual person, I flash all kinds of pictures through my mind. I can look at a piece of wood, and think of fifty things you can do with it. But then if I develop something in my mind to such a high degree, I no longer want to make it. It’s already so well formed in my vision that I don’t want to go through the labor of making it. It would become like a dead experience of just reproducing what was some mental image – finite and totally designed – which is the way much sculpture has been done.

In classical sculpture it was always an artist who drew the image ahead of time in all the details, and laborers followed very detailed charts to make it work. But by not knowing, it’s an alive experience every minute. You’re taking a risk, a chance, a decision; all that excitement is there every moment of it. But there are times when people commission you, and they want a sketch of what you’re going to do. So you think in those terms, you create a visual image in a drawing, and then you reproduce it for them.