ACTIVE PROJECTS

The Twelve Masons and the Artist

There are many versions of this story about the masons, who build a fortress and what they build one day it collapses the next.

The version I like the most and I would like to create my sculptures about to tell the story is about the twelve masons and their leader Kelemen (Clement), the master mason or bricklayer and the sacrificed woman, his wife.

In that version of the ballad masons took upon themselves to build the fortress of Déva, in Transylvania for a very good payment. The chief mason’s motivation is not the payment but rather the will to build something extraordinary that the world has not seen before to show what we, humans are without limits in our creations.

He is determined to show humanity’s purpose which is to create and to achieve their goal to show that humanities power is limitless but only if we believe it.

The rest of the crew signed up mostly for the promised and very good payment so they can become rich.

In the story the villagers believe in superstitions and believe that the area is cursed because of a woman back in time who sacrificed her son for riches and that is why the walls of the fortress are falling every day.

The masons make a pact with each other that the curse is only broken if they sacrifice a woman, mix her ashes into the mortar and the walls are going to stand.

The chief mason opposes it but in the end, agrees and his wife will be sacrificed. The fortress will be built and today it still stands on the top of the hill in Transylvania.

Why tell this story with my sculptures? Why would twenty-first century people be interested in a story that seems to be talking about a woman being sacrificed so that a building may stand? Is the story about the woman? Is it about men? Is it about the building still standing and surrounded with all those legends? Is it about the act of construction and the hardship? Is it about faith, sacrifice, crossroads, choices, money? Could it be about them all? Or could it have another message hidden in this story that the viewer could find in the finished art?

I hope my idea with the masons and the artist’s sculpture in the middle will convey an idea that will attract people’s attention and start a dialog about all those above questions and their personal experience too.