SLCC President’s Art Show

Sculpture is the art of failure. Stone is unyielding — or maybe I just lack the skill, but I break all my sculptures. I frequently fail.

In Army Special Forces there were several times I faced my own mortality and the mortality of others because of failures. But you learn something when you’re falling from the sky, or isolated in the monstrous waves of the ocean. Alone. Never give up. Never surrender. Never quit. Live. And that is how you deal with failure.

This sculpture is about failure. It was broken multiple times. It’s not what it should have been, but it’s what happens after not giving up. In tradition, I leave you with a shanty about a ship that failed in what she was supposed to do, but never gave up and went on to do much more — the RMS Olympic.