Alex Nodopaka’s Baseball Wire Sculptures

Artist Statement

By Alex Nodopaka

After years of traditional sculpting and art—from painting, drawing, etching, photography, and ceramics—I wanted something malleable between my fingers.

I have seen many perfect wire figurative sculptures before undertaking mine. The ones I saw duplicated perfectly traditional sculpting and to create the same didn’t add to my enthusiasm. Giving life to my sculptures and instilling them with dynamism but without the time-consuming traditional carving and modeling clay became my goal.

Wire was my chosen method. Like oil painting, it is a forgivable material. It is easy to change the final positions. In my sport series, finding stanzas typical of baseball was key to a successful presentation. From experience I already had plenty of visual examples in my mind.

There are few traditional stanzas that represent baseball positions. My primary addition was to incorporate the postures with traditional verbal expressions specific to baseball with a bent on humor:

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.

This is like déjà vu all over again.

The future ain’t what it used to be.

Baseball has its own rhythm, its own rules, its own specific appeal to our senses and sensibilities.

Alex Nodopaka originated in Ukraine. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & sings in tongues after Vodka. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Presently full-time author, visual artist in the USA but considers his past irrelevant as he seeks new reincarnations.