Hommage à Françoise NAUDET

HAPPY NEW YEAR. The late and most remarkable femme sculpteur Françoise Naudet was celebrated at an hommage I was fortunate enough to enjoy in France this past summer. And I was moved then, as now, by the stillness, grace and vulnerability of her creations.

There’s an openness, a contemplative and pensive thoughtfulness, a prayerfulness about the people Madame Naudet patently cared about deeply. It is possible to see something of the truth in each and every lovingly sculpted person.

And – wonderfully – their stillness affords the gift of an abiding contemplation. Time to reflect a bit about truth and about the human condition.

May there be time in 2011, for stillness, for contemplation, for thoughtfulness and prayerfulness, for a realigning of our so often skewed priorities. May there be time for truth. May there be time in my life for the Divine Sculptor to whom I have long addressed this prayer:

… wield well Thy tools in this workshop of Thine that we who come rough hewn may here be fashioned to a truer beauty by Thine own hand …