Harry Weber: Sculpting History

Harry Weber takes us on a captivating journey through the world of sculpture and art. From his early days drawing to creating monumental works that grace parks and public spaces, Harry shares the stories behind his inspirations and the creative process that fuels his artistry. With a casual, conversational style, he reflects on the importance of drawing from life, the challenges of sculpting, and the collaborative nature of his work. Listeners will find themselves laughing and learning as Harry playfully navigates through his experiences, touching on everything from his military background to his fascination with the human form in art. This episode serves not just as a glimpse into the life of a sculptor, but also as a reminder of the passion and dedication that goes into the creation of every piece of art.

So join us as we explore the intricacies of Harry's craft, from the conceptual drawings that start it all to the final installation of his larger-than-life sculptures. Through his engaging storytelling, Harry not only showcases his artistic journey but also highlights the universal themes of perseverance, creativity, and the joy of making art that resonates with people. Whether you're an aspiring artist or simply someone who appreciates the beauty of sculpture, this episode is a delightful mix of humor, insight, and inspiration that you won't want to miss.

[00:00] Welcome and Introduction

[00:27] Meet Harry Weber: Renowned Sculptor

[01:26] The Art of Drawing and Sculpting

[02:49] Creating Iconic Sculptures

[04:42] The Process of Sculpting Large Pieces

[06:46] Challenges and Techniques in Sculpture

[19:44] Military Service and Personal Reflections

[27:51] Transition to Full-Time Sculptor

[28:39] Competing for Commissions

[28:55] The Impact of Public Sculptures

[30:10] Evolution of Technique

[31:50] Listening While Sculpting

[32:57] Historical Perspectives and Influences

[33:44] Meeting Influential Figures

[35:18] Parallels in History

[37:23] The Role of Money and Success

[47:13] Advice for Aspiring Artists

[57:08] Conclusion and Reflections

Takeaways:

• Harry Weber emphasizes the importance of drawing from life rather than photographs to capture true essence.
• Creating sculptures involves a mix of talent, hard work, and a sprinkle of luck, according to Harry.
• Harry's journey into art has been a lifelong passion, beginning at the age of four with drawing.
• The artistic process is a collaborative effort, especially when sculpting large pieces with engineers and other artisans.
• His sculptures include representations of historical figures and sports icons, making his work a significant part of American culture.
• The conversation highlights Harry's humorous take on the artistic process, revealing both the struggles and joys of being a sculptor.
• His sculptures are not just art pieces; they serve as cultural narratives, representing the stories and histories of the figures they depict.

Sculptures/Items Mentioned in the Conversation

• Harry Weber in his studio

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to St. Louis in Tune.And thank you for joining us for
fresh perspectives on issuesand events with experts, community
leaders and everyday peoplewho make a difference in shaping
our society and world. We havean interesting interview today. Mark.
I'm Arnold Stricker along withMark Langston.
Hey, Arnold. Yeah, I amexcited about the interview that
we have today.
I don't know if I want to.
Say so too much about it, butif you've ever gone to the baseball

(00:23):
game at Busch Stadium, you'regoing to really enjoy the show.
You really will. I had theprivilege of having a conversation
with Harry Weber. As asculptor, he has an interview reputation
with over 150 largecommissioned sculptures in public
view in 27 states, theBahamas, China and Africa. These
include historical figures,notables in the arts, politics and
sports in 31 different citiesacross the country. Two of his sculpture

(00:46):
groupings have been namednational Lewis and Clark sites by
the National Park Service. Hewas selected in a national competition
to sculpt a statue of Dred andHarriet Scott, which now stands in
front of the old courthouse.And his sculptures of famous sports
figures are prominent featuresat 15 different professional and
amateur stadiums, includingBush Stadium and St. Louis, Kaufman
Stadium in Kansas City,Choctaw Stadium for the Texas Rangers

(01:07):
in Arlington, Texas, and theTD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 2023, he was awarded a staron the St. Louis Walk of Fame. He's
also been inducted into theSt. Louis Sports hall of Fame and
the Missouri Sports hall ofFame. And our conversation took place
at his studio as we discussedhis drawings, paintings, sculpture
and his life. Are you stillpainting or drawing or.

(01:28):
Oh, yeah. I draw some everyday. And I got together with a whole
bunch of graphic artists.That's a painting I did of a bar
in New York when I was reallya starving artist in New York.
That's cool.
That bar no longer exists.There's nothing big in here now because
we just dedicated the generalup in Culver Military Academy in
Indiana. There are a lot ofgood stories about everything around

(01:49):
here, but yeah, There areabout 150 sculptures now across the
country. China, Africa.
I heard about the Wainwrightone in China.
Yeah, yeah, that was fun. Andthe Sister City piece. And now the
companion of a Chinesenational batter is down at Ballpark
Village.
It's been set up then.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay.

(02:09):
It's already there.
I know you did a lot ofdrawing in Vietnam, but let's go
back. Were you doing thedrawings when you were in high school?
From when I was 4. I just lovedrawing and my father was an architectural
engineer. But he was also, Ithink, a frustrated artist. Did a
lot of drawing and cartooningat Washington University and where
he studied engineering. And Ijust loved it. Yeah. I just like

(02:32):
making marks on paper. AndI'll give you one of these. Somebody
wrote a book about me andasked what I did with the sketches,
and I said, nothing. I reallydon't. So they put 50 years worth
in here.
Oh, my. Wow.
I do the concept drawings upthere in the lower.
Okay.
And sometimes they'redetailed, like the pool holes and

(02:53):
Blue Brock. And sometimesthey're just action sketches to get
an idea of how we want tohandle it. Now, do you take.
You do a drawing from a photograph.
Do you do it. Films fromphotograph. From imagination. A lot
of it's just from imaginationthat Bull and Bear for Edward Jones.
And it's really strange. Wedid Bulls and Bears for Edward Jones
and for Stifel, like a monthapart. They both commissioned it.

(03:17):
They had no idea they weredoing it. They just wanted it. But
the one for Stifel ended upbeing 14ft tall. It's now on Broadway
in Washington. So that one wasso big that we had to rent a warehouse
because we had to move thosepieces back and forth. There's a
film about that, really? Ifyou just go to YouTube. It's tfool.
Bull and bear. 20, 20 minutes long.
Okay.

(03:37):
And it's a pretty goodexposition of how bronzes are made
from very stark to the finish.
This is the photograph. Andit's. That's what you used for the.
Yeah. And I told him that'sthe famous photograph, right. Of
Bavior scoring a winning goalin 1970 against the Blues. He'd already
scored the goal. You can seethe puck has already popped out of
the goal and no Picard. Thereason he's flying through the air

(03:59):
is. No. Picard hooked histhick clip off in the air.
That's a great letter there,too. Wow.
But, yeah, he's a really niceguy. Almost everybody I've done a
sculpture of that's alive.You've been really friendly and really
nice, but I told them that wasa great picture, but it was a lousy
sculpture to get flat. So weput him a microsecond between this

(04:21):
and that red.
You have stainless steel bargoing through there to hold him up
because that's a ton of weight there.
1200 pounds of bronze on hisright toe. Wow. And I can't. I can
imagine what Rodan would havedone if he had stainless steel. But
all of these guys. These areSmall maquettes for larger pieces.
It allows you to do a lot of movement.
Let's talk about that for aminute because. Or for more than

(04:42):
a minute. So you go up thereand you do your sketch, you do your
drawings of what you want todo. What's the next process?
Dealing with a client andheavy duty stuff. Because most people
are in the market for a bronzeonce in their lifetime, whether they're
a corporation, individual,school, whatever, maybe once or twice.
And they want to get it right.So like the bear we just finished
for the Boston Bruins. Thishas just been installed a month ago.

(05:05):
That's pretty.
That's a big 12 foot bear nextto the garden down Portal Park. And
when I first did it, I didsketches of the bear leaping like
Bobby Orr. It would be amirror. Right. And I got the marketing
department, which I think wasa young woman about 25, called and
said, we just love what youdid with the bear. It's just really

(05:26):
beautiful. But it's scary nearall the kids. Yeah. So we would like
him ferocious but not scary.And I said, that's pretty useless
information. But anyway, itwas a long haul and we finally got
it and they said we're going afat bear, mouth closed. Really? Yeah.
And a bear with a mouth, mouthclosed is not ferocious.

(05:47):
No. And so we finished. That'sthe maquette for it over there.
Okay.
We finished it in clay. Big 12Foot Plane Group ready to cast it.
They sent pictures up toCharlie Jacobs, who owns the Bruins.
He said, no, we want the mouthopen. So had to resculpt the head.
Gosh.
But anyway, the process goesfrom sketches to maquettes. And a

(06:08):
maquette is a fancy Frenchword for small model.
M, A Q, U, E, T, T, E or something.
That's it.
Okay. My. My French teacherwould be proud.
Yeah. I can't spell which whyI do this. This one is going to be
the next big project. If ithappens, it may be one of my last
because it's going to be big.Those figures will be 8ft tall. Wow.
And that's going to theNational Military Museum or center

(06:32):
in Perryville, Missouri.
Okay.
And they're raising money forit now. They're pretty close.
So you would do that here then?
I would do that here. Youwould do these pieces separately
and start moving them back andforth together to make sure that
they interrelate.
And this is all clay.
Yeah, clay on a wire armature.
And I hear you have a specialmixture of clay, clay and.

(06:52):
Yeah. There's a guy namedMcLaughlin and California, 20 years
ago. Hated Chavant Plasolineclay because it's awful to use. He
made a stuff called classicclay, which is a combination of clay,
wax and petroleum jelly. Andit's really nice because you can
see at room temperature, 70degrees, it sets up really hard.

(07:13):
You can almost polish it. Butwhen you put it in a cooker, it's
almost liquid if you can smearit on. The only disaster I had, I
did a nine foot statue of DonFerro from University of Missouri
outside the Perot field. AndAnn and I left for a horse show.
It was late in May and therewas a thunderstorm. Knocked out the
electricity, knocked out theair conditioning. Got to be about

(07:36):
110 degrees in the studio. Ihad up there and done six months
of work, was a puddle on thefloor. All I had left was the armature.
Oh, my God.
And so we had to redo it. Sothat's why this place is kept pretty
cool. When I was doing 4O, forinstance, it was just rebar with
chunks of insulation materialto fill it out. And then you throw
clay on that. But what we donow is we solve all the problems

(07:59):
of movement and threedimensionality because it's got to
work all the way around inthis size. These will then go and
get scanned with a laser. Thedigital information we put into a
CNC machine and we get a roughcomb model.
Okay.
Of this pack.
Okay.
And we will emaciate it. Inother words, take it down and emaciate

(08:22):
it by about a half an inch. Sothen I put a half an inch of clay
on it and I can get most ofthe detail. There's still a lot of
carving to be done.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Because when you takesomething from this size to that
size.
Right.
You notice things that youdidn't notice before. And so you
clean it up.
I think that's one of thethings about being a sculptor is
the detail. It's just not abig lump of something. You get into

(08:45):
creases in the sleeves andguy's pretty buff. He's got an i6
back there.
Yeah. These are real people.
And the muscle veins.
This is a guy named JohnHannigan who was a Marine in Afghanistan.
This is a nurse from Vietnam.And this is Harry Stewart, who was
a Tuskegee airman. And it'scalled Laying down the Burden. It'll
be a big pile of militaryequipment and he's throwing his boring

(09:09):
plate holder on it.
Wow. So you get this big thing back.
Yeah. Basically you carve itback until you like where you see
the movement. And if itchanges, we can break it and put
things around, put clay on it.And I'm not a fan of absolutely detailed
detail. I don't want to seeevery. Because it shuts things down.
It makes it less spontaneous.So even the drapery contributes to

(09:31):
the movement. And I likethings that. And so once this gets
done in full size, then we'llpull piece molds off of that. Like
he's eight feet tall. He'll becasting about at least a dozen pieces.
Do you cut that big one up ordo they do a mold of the big one
in sections or is that not.
In order to get the molds wewould probably cut off the arms so

(09:53):
you get all the undercuts.Sometimes cut off the head. Like
for instance the Lewis andClark fish down on the riverfront.
I know which one you'retalking about.
Yeah.
I've seen his arm come out ofthe water.
Yeah. They've moved him up outof the water. An intriguing thing.
We. There was actually theport authority had a point on his
chest where it was 20ft aboveflood state. He was like a water

(10:14):
gauge. But now we moved him20ft up onto Lenora Solomon Boulevard.
That's good.
That piece was cast in 198pieces. And if you can imagine then
reassembling that with like athree dimensional jigsaw puzzle where
each piece weighs at least 50 pounds.
Wow.
And pack welded together.
Yeah.
So I've worked with the samebunch of mold makers and welder for

(10:38):
30 years. The reason we have aUkrainian flag out in front is their
Ukrainian absolutely fabulousartisan. Right.
I saw their website insideYouTube of them. Yes.
Yeah. So Vlad and I have beenworking together for a long time
and like I said, about 150pieces. And every one of them is
an engineering exercise aswell as an artistic exercise.

(10:59):
So they do the mold there.
Yeah.
Of these like the arm or thehead of the pieces.
Yeah. And then we pull waxesfrom those mold.
Okay.
Then the waxes go to Lawrence,Kansas where at Astra foundry has
big ceramic shell vats wherewe can cast fairly big pieces. Then
we get the pieces of bronzeback and Vlad weld some back together.

(11:21):
I saw when they were placingthe dread and Harriet Scott sculptor
down at by the courthouse. Idon't think people think about the
transportation of all of thisback and forth. It must be.
And then like taking Wayneright to China. It was a boat. And
then we had to go meet, takeit to Nanjing and work with their
engineers and Put it togetherthere. No, it was put together.
Okay.

(11:41):
It was ready to be installed.We developed a technique for these
stainless steel trees whichinvolve two pores of concrete, one
usually 12 inches below grade.Then we bolt the whole tree in that
sculpture suspended on thatand you put more concrete. That's
in the lobby of the DruryPlaza Hotel.

(12:01):
And I've not seen that. I needto go down and see that.
And it's. God, that was amess. That's a 40 foot diorama that
has 40 tons of rock. A 60 footmural, eight life size figures. And
they all had to fit seamlesslyon the pile of rock. We only had
a 10 foot space to work withbecause Drury wanted to keep his

(12:22):
lobby open.
Oh.
And we worked at night, so wepulled molds off the rock. And so
these guys would sit exactlynaturally. Naturally. That's the
same with him. We installthese guys at grade so that they
look like they're walkingaround. You know. No pedestals.
Yeah. For new sculptures andeven refurbishing that they put some

(12:43):
kind of a patina. Right.
And that varies in colordepending on the chemicals you use.
It's just an acid bath.
Okay.
That reacts with the surfaceof the brown. And like liver of sulfur
makes it black. Like ferricoxide makes it brownish. Ferric nitrate
gives you a reddish hue.
Now is this something that youwould do?
We consult with the clients.
Okay.
In terms of what we want todo. But normally we give a good old

(13:06):
fashioned brown patina. And,and then the, the piece itself reacts
with the atmosphere. If youremember the millis found down by
the old train station.
Yes.
It, it is now back beingbrown. When he did it first for years
it was green because of theacid from the air. Sulfuric acid.
You've got to keep the thingswhack. Clean them once a year.

(13:28):
Okay.
But not going to wax on because.
I guess some people would likethis color and some people would
like the green.
Yeah. It really depends onwhat you want to do. The, the bear,
fortunately was a black bear,so we didn't have to worry much about
that. And sometimes like onBobby Orr, you can may tell there's
a variance in the patina.There's more liver on the shirt.
That's ferric oxide. So justsuggested a little bit of difference.

(13:52):
This is stainless steel.
Okay.
Just suggest the ice.
You could put multiple kindsof acid different.
Yeah. It's a little tough.It's a pain in the neck and, and
outside it doesn't hold up allthat well because of the natural
Atmospherics. Unless peopletake care of it. And most people
don't take care of.
So every year a bronzesculpture, a sculpture like this

(14:14):
would be wiped down. And yousaid waxed. What is like a hot wax?
Is it like a car wax or.
Yeah, it's multicosal hard wax.
Okay.
But you put it on during theday when it's hot, let it stay overnight,
and then polish it up.
Gotcha. Okay. Okay.
The neat thing with all thecardinals out here, and I love all
those writhing little figures.And we agreed with the client that

(14:36):
probably we didn't want hugeguys out there in a life size statue
is always 110% life size.
I was reading about thatbecause of shrinkage.
Partially because of shrinkageand partially because of the psychological
effect of same thing of seeinga movie star. Gee, you look so much
bigger on the screen.
Yeah.
And. And also bronze beingdark sucks up the light.

(14:57):
Okay.
So it makes things look alittle smaller. So you want a life
size figure to be a little bitbigger than life size. Because they
don't make statues of peoplethat weren't a little bit bigger
than life to begin with.
So who were your inspirations again?
Two big inspirations. I loveRodan and everything he did because
he did not over detail things.I could mention sculptors that are

(15:18):
really good sculptors, but Idon't like the end product because
it just looks. Doesn't haveany life to it. Too smooth, it's
too exact. It's just has nospontaneity. Everybody has their
own definition of art.
But that's true.
But mine is it should have animmediate emotional impact somehow.
And you should be able to seethe facility of the artist in it.
In other words, he knew whathe's doing to the point that every

(15:40):
stroke made sense but wasfluid. I mentioned Velasquez. Those
paintings of his look verydetailed, but they're not. They're
suggestions of detail. Theyalmost fool the eye.
That's interesting.
And same with Bellows. Samewith Sargent. A lot of cases. His
stuff moves into his life. Theportraits have amazing emotional
impact. My goal is twofold. IfI'm doing a person, I want to understand

(16:04):
what they're like. And I wantto understand not only a good likeness,
but an accurate representationof the emotion of the moment or of
their character. So it's gotto have two accurate pieces to it.
Even the bus. You want tocatch the character of it. That's
Jefferson.
Yes. Even the dog.
Even the dog. Yeah. Dog. Happydog. Yeah. My wife came in here.

(16:26):
This place was a mess. And shesaid, okay, that's the military wall.
That's the art wall.
She organized you?
Yeah, yeah, she did. Those areall leftover heads from maquettes.
Is this Jack Buck here?
That's Jack Buck. That's oneof three Jack Bucks I've done. That
one's at the hall of FamousMissourians. And when Jack was alive,
he said, I want this one tolook like. When Carol's coming through

(16:48):
the door with a bag of stuffthat she just bought at Neiman Marcus,
I say, having fun, blondie?That kind of wry smile.
What I'm looking at here,whether it's this one with the military
that you're doing forPerryville, or whether it's Jack
Buck or the dog waiting forapproval from the master or any of
these pieces, you really get asense of their personality. And that's

(17:10):
tough to do, but it's.
Translation of a lifetime ofsketching from life. If you look
through that sketchbook I gaveyou, my entertainment is going to
bars, airports, doctor'soffices, whatever, and watching people
and sketching them reallyfast. This is the thing that changed
my life. The first sculpture Iever did was a foxhound. Okay, that
one over there in 1977,because that's me as a huntsman up

(17:33):
above it.
Okay.
They asked me if I could do asculpture of a foxhound. Challenge.
Sure, I'll try it. Becausethey knew I'd do all kinds of art,
drawing and painting. And ifyou think about it, a three dimensional
figure is almost easier in away. They're always more difficult.
But if you do a drawing or apainting, you're taking a three dimensional
subject, putting it on a twodimensional surface and trying to

(17:54):
make it look threedimensional. Sculpture, you skip
a step, you've got a threedimensional subject and you make
it three dimensional. But ithas to work 360 degrees. And one
of Rodin's famous quotes wasa. A good sculpture is an infinite
series of profiles dependingon how you look at it. And there's.
There's no angle at which asculpture should not work, not only

(18:15):
as a representational piece ofa human being, because I do mainly
human beings, but it shouldlook like a piece of artwork. In
other words, it should have amovement and grace all of its own,
like athletes do. My wifesuggested, you've been doing horses
and dogs and foxes andcoyotes. Why don't you do people?
Ozzie Smith had just retired,and that's a maquette in wax of him

(18:38):
turning a double play. And Itook that down to the Cardinals.
And I didn't realize at thetime that they were having a slight
beef with Aussie. Smithretired. Everybody thinks that I'm
a great sports fan. I'm not. Icould. I. I could care less who wins
and who loses. I never watchfootball game. But I love what athletes
can do. Him and I'll tune intoa game and it fascinates me. But
the human body can do.

(18:58):
And he could do some things.
And he could do some things.And so I said no, they weren't interested.
Okay. But they called the nextday, said, we've been thinking about
it and we don't want to doOzzie Smith, but we want to do all
the players with retirednumbers who are in the hall of Fame.
At that time it was 10. Whenwe put up pooh holes from Molina
which are already finished inthe basement, that push they'll be.

(19:21):
Yeah.
So when they get into the hallof Fame. Yeah, just move those right
out there.
Yeah. They're way ahead of thegame. Yeah. They figured I was 80
when they wanted to make sureit was very complimentary. Yeah.
Build a Witcher said, hey,they're going to be in the hall in
five years. We're not sureyou'll be here in five years. Why
don't you do them now? And I'mvery content about that. By the way.
I. I have had a reallyinteresting life.

(19:44):
I see a Lt. Mars. Were you a lieutenant?
Yeah, in the Navy on riverpatrol boats in Vietnam. A couple
of destroyers and started offin submarines. I went from submarines
to destroyers to river patrolboats, back to destroyer. Those river
boats, those were 31ft long.
They were some kind of stateof the art. You could turn on a dime.

(20:05):
Oh, we could turn on a dime.But these Mark 1 boats, the very
first one, which we were thefirst units to go to Vietnam in 1966.
There were two guys. I can'tremember their names. The government
had asked Lockheed to do it.They said, we'll get them to you
in two years. These guys put aprototype together in six weeks.
And what this was a pleasurecraft powered by two General Motors

(20:26):
engines and Jacuzzi waterjets. You know that. So there was
no screw below that. And it'sseven and a half tons. That thing
drew nine inches of water onthe plane. So we go almost anywhere.
And the forward machine gunswere ripped out of old B17 mount.
They were old B17 mounts. Theyjust dropped.
Seriously. Wow.
And so everything was slapdash together.

(20:47):
No kidding.
Then the Mark 2 boats were twoyears or a year later.
Okay. Did you go to OCS school or.
No, My college was paid forbecause my father wanted me to be
an engineer. And I thoughtthat was about as pleasant as running
a cheese grater on my head. Icouldn't stand the idea.
So you were at Princeton, right?
Yeah. I applied for a Navy scholarship.

(21:08):
Okay.
And I passed the test and Ipassed the physicals and all this
kind of stuff. And they said,where do you want to go? And I said,
I got accepted at Princeton.They said, we'll send you to Princeton.
So it was full ride, tuition,books, fees, 50 bucks a month, naval
ROTC. And you came out as aregular officer.
Right.
Just like out of the academy.
Exactly.
So there was just as many ofus as there were academy graduates.

(21:30):
Okay. Wow.
Because there was, in the ROTCat any school, about 80 to 90% of
them were reserve officers andthere were about 10% that were getting
ride scholarship.
Thank you for your service.
Oh, no. Yeah. You're young,you're here, you're indestructible.
The valuable thing I learnedin Vietnam was the absolute assurance
of my own mortality. Andthat's been very helpful psychologically

(21:54):
through life. And also Ifigured it was. But so dumb, so idiotic
a war. I was proud of myservice, but the war was idiotic.
Yeah. And I figured it'll beso dumb, we'll never do anything
like that again.
We obviously haven't learned.
No. And nobody learns.
Nobody learn.
The current registration ofhistory majors nationwide, college,

(22:15):
1.3%.
That's why we have so many wars.
Yeah.
Because we're not reading our history.
No. And now we're trying torewrite it, which is even more. Yes.
Looking at these small piecesup here. The guy kicking the barrel,
which is cute and looks like acivil war.
No, that's Jack Daniels.
Jack Daniels. Do you ever dosomething that small or how do you
get something smaller?
I only did that small becausewhen I got out of the Navy, I was

(22:38):
medical down in the Navy and Iwent into advertising. And then I
worked for a year at Gardner,worked for a couple of years at Ralston
Arena. In the marketingdepartment was new products director.
Gillette was marketingdirector at Carter Wallace in New
York. And then I started myown marketing consulting company.
So they were my clients. JackDaniels. Yeah. And one of my clients.

(23:00):
Okay, I am fond of sayingthat. I'm not fond of it and I'm
not proud of it, but myclients were Tyson Chicken, R.J.
reynolds Tobacco, AnheuserPort, Jack Daniels and Smith Klein
French Pharmaceutical. I workfor everything that killed people.
I think the only ones.
That's awful. Yeah. But theJack Daniels people, I really enjoyed

(23:21):
it. So those were Clank.
Gotcha. I love that. Kickingthat barrel down. That's great.
Yeah, the barrel one. That'sthe way they do. Yeah. Roll them
into place.
Now, I noticed this down here,which doesn't look like one of what
I would call your quote,unquote, normal kinds of pieces.
Is this like a personal piece?
No, that's Doug Flutie's handwhen he was 12ft tall. What? Yeah.

(23:44):
Wow. And I decided to justkeep it.
Do you ever do things otherthan like animals and busts or people
figures, Creative thing or.
Yeah, some of the stuffinside. There's a sculpture of Walt
Whitman in there. H o Maker.When I was doing stuff for myself.
But doing bronzes for yourselfis an expensive enterprise. It's

(24:04):
one of the rhythms that notmany people dabble in it.
Yeah. It's probably why youdraw so much then, right?
Yeah. Drawing is easy. Chiselsare cheaper. Yes. The guy that influenced
me most because of his way Iended up drawing was a guy named
Howard Brody, who I firstbecame aware of him during the Patty
Hearst trial and to thecourtroom artist. But he had been

(24:26):
a combat artist in the Marines.
Wow.
And just extraordinarilypowerful. Very quick sketches. And
that's what I love doing. Ifyou go through that book, you'll.
You'll see he did one for you.As I remember the story, you were
younger and you saw.
That's Bill Malden. Okay. Andthat's inside as well.
Okay. I'm getting those guysmixed up.
Yeah. But they're similar.They were both worked in World War

(24:48):
II.
Okay.
But Brody, everything he didhad movement and power, and you could
read the emotion in it.
And where does that come from?
I don't know. The only thingsthat make me cry are things that
are done extraordinarily well.You see something happening that
is a once in a lifetime thing.An immense defiance or immense courage

(25:09):
or once you facility withanything, a singer. It's like I went
to the Kentucky Derby. I lovehorses, obviously, and Jack Daniels
being my client. Brown Foremanhad a box right at the finish line.
Oh, wow.
And I was thinking, God, thisis great. And then I heard down the
stretch they come and thechairs well up my eyes. I couldn't
see it saying. But it's thosekinds of moments. If you're doing

(25:30):
representational artwork, youwant to have that moment captured,
even if it's a moment ofstillness. That drawing of the guy
up there with the gun here. Yeah.
Yes.
The cigarette hanging out ofhis mouth and everything else that's
about as detailed as I everget. But it does capture a moment.
It does.

(25:51):
This is my favorite piece ofartwork that I ever produce in three
dimensions or two dimensions.That was done in about a minute and
a half on the plane of Reed.Two guys slogging through the mud
to get back to our littlebase. That was just a quill pen and
spit on a little piece of paper.
Wow. Sometimes when I willlook at a piece of art, whether it's

(26:14):
in 3D or 2D, they talk to me.
Yeah.
It speaks to me.
When I was little, I would gospend time with my grandmother because
my mother taught school. Myfather was working with Shield Mill
and she had no. Obviously notelevision or anything, but there
were a whole bunch of pictureson them. And she would sit and tell
make up stories about thepictures and they made a great impact

(26:37):
on it. This one is reallygoing to be cool. We just finished.
This is going to be atJefferson Barra.
Yeah.
Which is where I will be eventually.
That's right in the middle of circle.
Yeah.
That'll be wonderful.
This is my father. I did apainting him.
Oh, there's the Malden there.
Yeah. I had a brown paper bagthat my. I bicycled from University

(26:58):
City down to the Loop. Got astreetcar all the way downtown, walked
to the Admiral and was goingto take a cruise on the Admiral with
my lunch. And I saw BillMalden. I don't know how old I was,
12 or something like that. AndI said, Mr. Malden, you're my hero.
He dumped my food out andspread out the bag and drew Willie.
That's crazy. So you stillride in your free time?

(27:20):
I do. And anne, who is 12years my junior, still competes and
wins.
Wow.
And horse shows. Basically allI do is, well, just trail riding
and stuff like that.
But that's fun. That's exercise.
Yeah. It's good to keep thisancient body moving. I actually bought
the Appendix quarter horsebecause he was only 15:1. Most of

(27:42):
our horses were 16:3 or 17hands. And getting down from those.
That's a.
Is a jar.
Get a little ladder.
Keep getting up with 15:1.
Not too bad. When did youtransition to being a full time sculptor?
The transition from. From justdrawing for fun, which started when
I was master foxhound atBridal Spoon.
Okay.
And so started doing thosefoxhounds and my marketing career.

(28:06):
I had a pretty successfulcompany for 13 years. And then Ann
and I decided that even if westarved, it was a lot more fun to
make a living doing artwork.It started to transition in, like,
late 70s, and the equality ofincome was starting like a 1990 and
then 1997. It was all artwork and.

(28:27):
And you never looked back?
No, it was. And it's a nicething because 80% of what I do has
come in over the transom.People call, I want a statue of this.
And you do it 20%. I competefor it. Either I'm requested. Like
the sculpture of the directorof the zoo we just did last year.
Okay. They had, I think, eightartists competing for that.

(28:48):
Wow.
And you send in yourqualifications, you do drawings,
you do whatever. And they makea determination. You win some, you
lose some. Fair. But the nicething about sculpture is every time
you put one up, it's like a billboard.
Absolutely.
And if the people like it,like I said, most people are in the
market for sculptures once ormaybe twice in their career. And

(29:09):
the cardinal thing has beenfantastic because 40,000 people 80
times a year pass thosethings. And one of them, like the
athletic director at BostonCollege who came here to watch the
Red Sox play, said, oh, wewant to snatch a Doug Flutie. I like
the way this guy does it. So.
Wow.
He asked the Cardinals who didthose, and that's how I got that
job. The Cardinals are repeatclients. The Bruins are repeat clients.

(29:31):
There's Nacogdoches, Texas, Ithink I've got six statues down there.
Seven statues down there. I'vegot stuff at 17 different stadiums.
There aren't that manysculptors that do it nationally and
actually make a living at it.Of Chicago does a lot of sports figures.
You know, there are a fewothers, not many, and I'm really
lucky is that half my work islike history and just people that

(29:55):
have done things that half asathletic at better rate mortgage.
We love talking to peopleabout mortgages. If you are researching
house hunting, ready to buy orrefinancing, it's time for a better
mortgage experience at betterrate mortgage. A better rate is just
the beginning. Better RateMortgage.com housing lender. Have
you seen your technique evolveor what you expect as the end product

(30:16):
kind of change over the courseof your career?
If you're any good, you've gota. You've got an indication of what
you like it to end up lookinglike. And when I give the occasional
lecture to our students andthings is 80% of what you produce
as an artist is goodrepresentation of your work. 10%

(30:37):
you wish you could have back.And 10% is so good. You can't believe.
How the hell did I do that?
Yeah, where did that come from?
Yeah, where did that comefrom? So that's pretty. Pretty good,
Mark, if you can do that.
But you were talking aboutthat one that you kind of. As your
best piece.
Yeah.
That you did in the least amount.
Of Couple of minutes. Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's because if youthink about it, I can only speak

(31:01):
for representational artists,but I will also guarantee you that
even guys like Roscoe ColorField Painting worked his tail off
to really understand how thosecolors would interact and how he
could get them on a canvas. Soif you're going to be successful,
it's 80% work. In other words,just doing it. And thanks to the

(31:21):
fact that I'd been drawingsince I was 4 years old, that automatically
connect your eye to your handto your brain, and you work automatically.
You don't think.
Yeah, it's exactly the same asbeing an athlete in the. If a tennis
player thinks about how he'sgoing to hit a backhand, he's screwed.
It's an automatic. It's anentire right brain exercise.

(31:43):
A muscle memory.
Yeah, it's a muscle memory,but it's a muscle memory that involves
the eye, the brain, and thehand all working together at once.
And for instance, I can listento audiobooks, which I do all the
time while I'm sculptingperfectly fine. If I have to make
a measurement, I have to turnit off. But this part is so automatic
and so independent of what I'mlistening to that it's not multitasking.

(32:06):
It's just using differentparts of the brain. And it actually
helps me because I don't startsaying, where does that eye go? You're
just.
Yeah, you're cruise control.
Yeah.
You're automatic pilot. Youlisten to music at all while you're.
Oh, yeah, sure.
Okay. What kind of music doyou like?
It varies. Some classical, buta lot of it Americana. Now, I don't
know if you heard of this kidJ. Chessy Wells. No. Play him sometime.

(32:28):
He's a new Bob Dylan. Reallyvery good. But Guy Clark, all those
guys.
Does it vary with what youlisten to musically or a book based
upon what you're sculpting atthe time?
No. Okay. Like I said, it'scompletely separate. Okay. I go from
biographies, historicalfiction, thrillers, anything like

(32:51):
that.
It's a great way to pass time, too.
Yeah, it's a great way to reada lot of books. I'm a big fan of
reading. I give a talk toMarines every quarter that are having
a hard time adjusting tocivilian life. And the huge advantage
we have now in this day andage and it's disappearing, which
is odd, is that if you were inthe Middle Ages, you lived one life.

(33:15):
If. If you were lucky, youwere on this planet for 4,000 a week
and then gone. We're in asituation that thanks to book, we
can experience thousands oflives and how people thought about
things. And it changes the wayyou think.
About things and go places andnot even have to leave your house.
Carl Sagan said, it's a timemachine and it does help you. It
makes you a better citizen.
You have a favorite period ofhistory in American history?

(33:37):
No, I love all history. Ithink ancient history sometimes is
actually more instructive thancurrent history.
That's true.
I very seldom get starstruck.I enjoyed Chuck Berry's company.
I played golf with Gazi Smithsand all that. Good. It was. It's
fun to meet these people. Theydon't make statues of dull people.
And in 99% of the cases,they're very forthcoming, very outgoing.

(33:59):
Destroy their company. We wentto the funeral of Cliff Hill in Washington
D.C. he was the Secret Serviceagent that jumped on the back of
Kennedy's car and he died atage 93. His wife asked us to come
and she was thinking of makinga statue of that for the new Secret
Service headquarters.
Wow.
So she asked us to go to thefuneral. Whether anything comes of

(34:20):
that or not. It was intriguingto go to the funeral because it was
at the National Cathedral andyou heard the National Choir Frederick
Hart sculpture. The frieze onthe front of that thing is incredible.
Yeah. And. But the. One of theattendees there was Anthony Blinken.
And I thought, God, I wouldlove just to shake his hand and thank
him for what he tried to do.He re put together the alliances

(34:42):
that were shaky after.
Right.
80 years. And I went up tojust to shake his hands and we ended
up talking for about 20minutes. I was, oh, I just got died
of starstruckness. Yeah.
Yeah.
Because he's an intelligent,extraordinarily erudite and caring
individual. He said he put 3million miles on the plane while

(35:03):
he worked for Biden.
My God.
And traveling back and forth.And he looks a lot younger at the
funeral than he did when hewas working. Yeah. He could stress
work in his death. But one ofthe things. Back to the conversation
we're learning from history,he started talking about parallels
of the current situation. AndI said, in a way, it almost resembles
the Bronze Age collapse, whereeverything was working well. 1200

(35:26):
BC, the Egyptians weretraining with the Assyrians, with
the Hittites, MycenaeanGreeks. Everybody was happy. And
then it all just a confluenceof bad actors happened all at once
and it just collapsed. Thevery idea that you can make decisions
that affect your own life.
Yes.
Is an amazing privilege.Nobody believes 90% of the world's

(35:48):
population is born on a dot,and they're not going to move off
that dot. You have theobligation as a human being, if you
have the opportunity, take alook and see. What can I do to change
my life for the better orother people's lives for the better?
Yaval Harari, he wrote a bookcalled Sapiens. Really good book.
Short history of the humanRace. He's an Israeli thinker. He

(36:09):
basically gives a picture ofcivilization. Things are better now
than they have ever been.
Absolutely, yeah.
In the Middle Ages, the secondleading cause of death other than
death and childbirth wasmurder, because there was no rule
of law to control it. Youdidn't like your neighbor, you bonked
him on the head. Civilizationhas been progressing in fits and
starts. And he said, normallyif things are going wrong, like Hitler

(36:32):
and Mussolini and that gaggleof dictators. Yeah, it takes a catastrophe
to set things right. World WarII was a catastrophe. It set things
right back on the path. Hesaid, I'm afraid now. He says that
if it begins to fall off thepath again, catastrophe will be so
big it will not berecoverable. So the damage will be

(36:54):
irrevocable.
David French had aconversation about how there was
always some kind of, I don'twant to say a moral imperative, but
a moral cleansing. And then wefall down. And then there was some
kind of moral thing thathappened. We fall down.
That's exactly what he was saying.
Right.
You know, slowly proceedinggraph, but in the end result, we
are equipped with the samebrain we had a hundred thousand years

(37:14):
ago, but we are also equippedwith massive amounts of destructive
technology that they didn'thave a hundred thousand years ago.
So it's a very scary time.
Going back to a baseballanalogy, when Mark McGuire signed
his last contract with theCardinal. He goes, how much more
money do you need? And where'sthe point wet, you know, how many
billions of dollars or billions?
Yeah. The first mistake, Imean, you can take this all the way

(37:37):
back to the Quahito Indianswho had like debit cards that were
running potlatches. Who couldgive the most away was the music.
They started. As soon as moneybecomes the scorecard, I'M not saying
money is bad. I like beingable to pay my bills all the time.
I like being able to have the.
To do with what you want.
Yeah, but if money becomes thescorecard, it begins to own you.

(37:59):
Great story about KurtVonnegut and Joseph Heller, who were
very close friends and theywere invited as the token cultural
attendees to a hedge fundparty at on Long Island. And they
arrived, all the icesculptures and the champagne and
the caviar and the orchestraplaying. And Monica turned to Heller

(38:19):
and said, joe, this guy makesmore money in a half an hour than
your entire book Run Dead OnceLife. And Heller said, yeah, I know,
but I have something he'llnever have. He said, what's that?
Enough. It is staggering howmany people I know chase the buck
for no reason whatsoever.
Now they're not happy. Yeah,you can't buy happiness.

(38:39):
I'm really lucky I had enoughmoney to buy this place because I
happen to like solitude.
This is very solid. It's verypeaceful. I really enjoy it because
of where I live right now.It's very noisy. You know, it can
be quiet on occasion.
But same token, I was veryhappy living in the depths of New
York where there wasn't asilent moment. But.

(39:00):
Yeah, but that's differenttimes of life, though, isn't it?
It's different times of life,but I think I could live in New York
now and stagger down thestreet, still have a bit time. But
no, and it's. The other nicething about my job is I do meet incredibly
interesting people who aredoing interesting things and have
had the culmination of theirlife be some kind of excellence.

(39:20):
Yeah. Other than money. I'venever done a statue of somebody simply
because he had a lot of money.
And there's everyday peoplethat do that. Exactly what you're
talking about. They do a verygood job, whether it's being a custodian
or working in a factory. Andthey're. We always tend to, I think,
exalt the people that we seeon television. We've had a little

(39:41):
brief conversation about that.People, but people who do a really
good job.
There's a great TheodoreRoosevelt quote, secret to happiness,
Be something, be anything, butjust make sure you're a good one.
And I. I feel that, by theway, best use of money for me is
I am. The most terrifyingthree words in the English language
for me are do it yourself. Ilove it when I can pay somebody who

(40:04):
knows, who's asked from a holein the ground to do something that
I don't Know how to do.
Or don't want to do or don'twant to. Don't have the time to do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess.
And like I said, you got four,500 years tops on this planet. You
want to waste a week replumbing the basement. Yeah. When
you don't know how to do it inthe first place. If. But if you're
a really good plumber and yousolve somebody's problem and make

(40:25):
them happy, that's huge. Yeah.Great line from Henderson, the Rain
King. A great book. It talk.Talking about priorities, how you
live your life was. Hendersonwas a. He was an investment manager.
Very successful, 50 years old,hugely rich, very unhappy. And there's.
It's a fun book. So he goes toAfrica and screws everything up for

(40:47):
a lot of people and. But hesays, just once in my life. Once
in my life, I'd like to lookback at something I did and say,
good for me. That's what youstrive for every day. And justifiable
pride is not a sin, it's amotivation. Yeah.
Is there a something thatyou've done that. It's a twofold

(41:07):
question. And you don't haveto give the specific detail of it,
but is there something thatyou've done that came very easily
for you, and then somethingthat you really struggle with getting
the final product done?
Every one of these things wasstruggle. Even the thing I said,
it took two minutes. Thatwasn't easy. It was. There was a

(41:27):
piece of good fortune there.In other words, a lot of happy accidents
happened all at once because Ihad an idea of what I wanted to do.
It just happened. But all ofthe preparation to get to that point
was a lot of work. When I was11 and 12 and 13 and 14, drawing.
And I draw every day,constantly be disappointed what I
turned out. I would work on itand be terrible. And it wasn't until

(41:51):
I was about 20 that I startedconsistently turning out things that
were close to what I imagined.And the quick sketches, to me are
the quintessence of what I dofor a living. You know, if you can
capture that moment and if youcan have. And it's. The difficult
part with a sculpture is ittakes nine months to a year to make

(42:12):
one of these things. If youcan make one, and it ends up having
the same spontaneity that asketch took 10 minutes to do, then
you're. That's reallysomething. Yeah. Yeah. You're working
on it for months closely.
To keep that excitement going.
Yeah. Yeah. That's why youdon't want to work too long in any
one period of time, becauseyou're. Most important part of my

(42:37):
day is the first threeminutes. I walk into the studio and
I look at what I've done. Yousee what's there and what's not there.
But after a while, your eyegets not tired, but you begin to
hypnotize yourself, saying,oh, yeah, that's good.
I remember something Bentondid when he was doing the piece for
the Grand Ole Opry, which Ibelieve was his last piece. And he
always liked to do the bigcanvas. He would come back in and

(43:00):
he would never sign until hewas completely satisfied. And this
is always somethinginteresting I find about artists
is they always want to tweakit a little bit. He finally went
out and he was content withit. He signed it, and that's when
he died. He had a heartattack. Do you ever have a time when,
you know, yeah, this is done,or I'd like to work a little bit
more on this one, or.
Yeah, there's a point at whichyou reach that diminishing return,

(43:21):
the saturation point? Yeah, Imight be, as the thing is, leaving
in Vlad's truck to go down andmake running down to get one. One
last week. But, yeah, itgenerally doesn't make any difference.
If you come in one morning andlook and say, yeah, it's done, we'll
sign it.
Do you have a place younormally sign that's consistent?
No. Somewhere unobtrusive.
Some artists do this. They dotheir little signature. I know Revis

(43:45):
did this. He'd always. He'd doa peace sign and. Yeah, do anything
like that.
No, the one piece of advice Igot from Marcel Salinas, who was.
Who gave me painting lessonsin the 90s, he said, if you make
something good, for God'ssake, sign it so they can read it.
That's true.
And so I block letter. Mysignature is block letter Weber.

(44:06):
That's the signature thatmakes sense.
He also gave me a piece ofadvice saying, remember, Harry, even
the masters produced, so don'tbe too. Don't beat up on yourself
too much.
And I think that you've beendoing this long enough to know and
you've seen a progression ofyour work that the things that you're
producing, you wouldn't bedoing them if you weren't confident
that how they were going to turn.

(44:27):
Yeah, the only thing I'mconfident of is they're a good representation
of what I wanted to get done.If somebody else doesn't like them,
that's their. A Lot of reallygood sculptors. Like, they're a lot
of really good guitar player.The three things you have three legged
stool. 80% is work, 10% istalent. 10% is pure luck. I believe
in the gladwell thing of10,000 hours. Do anything for 10,000

(44:48):
hours, you get pretty good atit. Talent separates the one with
10,000 hours who get it just alittle bit better than that guy that's
competent. It's beyondconfidence. It has some life to it.
It has some vigor and style.And then the third component is pure
luck. And you can't get bywithout all three. So you've got

(45:09):
to put in the work, have thetalent to begin with and then be
very lucky and recognize whenyou are getting some luck and take
advantage of it.
That's true. Do you everstruggle to come up with a creative
aspect or have a roadblock working?
No, I. Almost every otherenterprise in my life, whether it's
driving a car, playing tennisor riding a horse, I get sometimes

(45:31):
like that artwork I've done solong that I'm pretty confident and
I get to problem. But Irecognize them as problems, not failures.
It's a thing I've got to takecare of, but I'm perfectly capable
of taking care of. Okay. And Iguess the other advantage I have
is because all my money comesfrom clients now Self suffer galleries.

(45:52):
And I do, but it's a tiny bit.I am not a prima donna and I am very
oriented toward pleasing theclient and not presenting any problems
to them, which is why I usedto hate things. And when I was in
business where people wouldnickel and dime me to death. And
so we put out a bid and westick to it. And you win some, you

(46:14):
lose some. Sometimes you putin more work than you get paid for,
sometimes a little less.
But it all washes out.
It makes it easy for theclient. This is how much you're going
to be paying and this is whenyou're going to be paying it.
Yeah.
But no, I would say somepieces are bigger challenges than
others. Like the Bobby Orrpiece with massive challenge in terms
of how we were going to getthat. Yeah. But I think both Vlad

(46:34):
and I have great confidenceand we pull it off. Pull it off.
It's great to have somebodylike that that you've worked with.
Oh, yeah. I couldn't do itwithout him and I don't think he'd
have a business without me.
And he's down in Soulard still.
Sue Lord. Yeah.
Okay.
And I've worked with him for30 years and I yet to see him lose
his temper. And we've had alot of stuff to lose our temper about

(46:55):
that. Speak highly, and Icreate the problems he solves. Yeah.
For the engineering side, Iknow you gave the 80%.
10%. 10%. Any other advicethat you would give someone who loves
to draw or is thinking aboutthat they have an inclination to
be a sculptor or an artist?
Yeah, a number of pieces ofadvice. Number one, an art history

(47:16):
course is probably morevaluable than a fine arts course.
Look at what everybody elsehas done. Don't copy it, but find
what you think really iseffective for you. And like I said,
everybody has their owndefinition of what art is. The only
area of art that I write off,and this is personal opinion, is
conceptual art, to me, isnothing more than big bumper stickers

(47:39):
that, you know, even ifostensibly they're supposed to say
something, but it's. It islike a bumper sticker. It's just
a clever, whimsical hunk ofstuff. I have yet to see a piece
of conceptual art. That isart. It's just. But I do like abstract
stuff. Like, I love Roscoe. Ilove Kandinsky. Yeah. But those guys

(48:01):
are artists. They speak to youfrom whatever medium they're doing.
So, yeah, I would say, firstof all, take a good art history course
or read a good art historybook and get familiar with what other
people have been doing, andthen develop in your mind what you
would like to produce and thenwork toward producing it. And that's
tough. You'll see thesketchbook there. I. There's a whole

(48:23):
bunch of different styles.Styles vary by the implement I have
on the hand, how many drinksI've had, how much time I have, and
who I want to emulate. So,number one, look at a lot of art.
In taking a fine arts course,usually you are subject to one or
two guys teaching who havetheir own set of skills. But it's

(48:43):
like going to a book clubwhere there's only one book, Open
it up, look at a lot of stuff.And then for representational artists,
any. Anybody that's doinganything close to representational
art, even like Adam Wong,there's a guy you ought to talk to.
See that he saw there.
Oh, wow, that's really nice.
Now look him up, and he'd be agood interview for you sometime.
Adam Long.
Adam Long, yeah.

(49:04):
Local.
Yeah. And he just picks updriftwood and leaves and look at
the thing from the front.
That's crazy. That is crazy.You have to have a real good sense
of perspective on.
Yeah. And he's he has got the80 work, 10% talent, and he is just
missing that 10% of look. Andhe's a really good representational

(49:26):
artist. Second piece of adviceis if you're in representational
art, draw from life as much asyou can. Don't draw from pictures,
don't copy a photograph. Allart, even if it's representational,
is an abstraction. It's anabstraction of life.
Right?
So make your own method ofabstracting that life. And the only
way you're going to do that isdrawing from life. And, you know,

(49:47):
like I said, doctor's officeis anywhere you are, sketch and draw.
And every Friday afternoonthere's a whole bunch of artists
that I know get together downon Grabway there. I hire a live model.
You could all sit around,draw, and basically at each other's
work. But it's fun. That's mymajor recreation, is still drawing.
Boy, oh boy. I. It's a tough,tough field to make a living. Like,

(50:11):
a tiny percent of musiciansmake their living as musicians. A
tiny percent of writers, 90%of athletes, a tiny percent of artists.
And they're lucky. Like, Adamis a fantastic artist and he's got
his own style on his own. Heneeds to get lucky. Tell him I think
you want him.
I will.
And other than that, just keepworking away at it until whatever
you produce looks like whatyou want it to be. Don't get close,

(50:34):
don't. Don't copy whatsomebody else has done. Frame that
picture in your mind of whatyou want to get on the piece of paper
or in that clay or whatever.
I'm a musician. What acomposer puts on the score, they
reveal all their techniqueright there. And you can actually
look at it and copy it. Butit's the interpretation of making
that black and white into awhole nother.

(50:56):
That's why they're conductors.
Exactly. And everybody'sversion of Shostakovich's Fifth is
going to be a littledifferent. Like you said, you can
copy something interpreting orfeeling the music at a given time.
Or do you understand the timein which he was writing and why he
wrote it?
That's getting into the wholenew criticism idea with what the
author had in mind. This iswhat I can get out of it. I'm more
of an originalist in thatthing. I like to know what he had

(51:18):
in mind, what he. But.
And a lot of times what'sprinted by the publisher, like dynamic
or tempo markings is notreally what the music says.
And it's a very stringent areaof art, is Music composed because
of that very nature. If youwant to pass it along, you pass it
along in a printed form. JamesTaylor didn't know how to read.
Music, but he knew how to write.
Yeah. And he can play alongwith the band. Because in that case

(51:40):
not just the hand, the. Thebrain and the hand and the instrument
all going. It's fascinating tome. And when they've studied how
musicians learn pieces andit's. It starts out very left brain.
No matter how fastful they arereading music. It is a left brain
exercise.
That's correct.
And. But when it's performed,it's a right brain exercise.

(52:03):
That's correct.
It just happens.
It's the technical aspectwe've always talked about when you
move from being a technicianto a musician. And it's the practice,
it's the 80%. You're doingyour things here and then it's there.
And you can actually focus onwhat is this piece of music actually
doing.
Yeah. And I. There are acouple of. One of the things I love.
Old fashioned boogie woogie,you know. And those guys that continually

(52:27):
just riff on things.
Oh yeah.
And if there are only a coupleof people I would have liked to have
been other than myself. Iwould have loved to have been George
Gershwin.
And he's written someunbelievable kinds of things.
I know. And he stole. Well,that's why I said to study our history.
You. God. I'd like to be ableto do that. But I'd like to be able

(52:48):
to do that in my own style. Isit my own way of expressing? And
I'm sorry. I don't know.There's old fuddy duddy coming out.
But the late 30s and the 40s,great music. Fantastic music. The
late 60s and 70s, fantastic music.
I agree with you.
What we've got now is thateven goes for the jazz. I love jazz

(53:08):
music. I love Jimmy Jeffrey.
I was a big Charlie Parkerfan. Yeah.
Charlie Parker.
Yeah.
Did you ever see Whiplash?That movie?
I have seen that.
It was a great thing. Yeah.It's the whole idea that he recognized
that this kid was a supertalent. Yeah. And he just beat him
to death. He told the storyabout Charlie Parker. There's a great
line there where she's talkingin the bar. He said. And Charlie
Parker got up. Play a set. Andhe did okay. It was pretty awful.

(53:34):
He was halfway through the setand he was. He was doing okay. And
then I forgot who it was.Threw a symbol in his head. Yeah.
Said get off the stage. Andbecause it wasn't as good as he could
do. And he said, he could havesaid, okay, thanks, son, good job.
And he said, that's one of themost destructive things on earth.
You can say to an artist, goodjob. You know, you got to be better

(53:57):
than that. The end of thatmovie is so good. It was. It's a
good old fashioned movie, butthe very end of it, he's playing
his ass off. I forgot the nameof the piece that he was doing, but
obviously doing it great. Andthe only time Simmons looks down,
just this hit of a smile andthat's the end of the movie. Yeah,

(54:18):
yeah.
I think we've done kids adisservice by saying to them, yeah,
good job, good job. And itmaybe wasn't. And then there's the
other extreme where you'rejust totally berating them.
And that was the tension inthe whole movies. Did he destroy
him or make him right? Andthere's a point at which he could
have destroyed him, but it Iso far knock on anything theologically

(54:41):
sound. I haven't had anybodycome up and say, oh, that's, that's
terrible, but yeah, that would hurt.
And some people need to bebrought down to bring them back up
when they think they're reallygood, but they haven't seen somebody
who's really good. I think ahigh school football or basketball
players or baseball playerswhen they go to college and then
everybody is that good. Orthen when you go to the pros and

(55:01):
you're like, wow, everybody'smoving really fast here. Wow, It's.
What percentage of people whoplay basketball in high school or
football in high schoolactually get to college and then
get from college to the pros who.
Actually start that tiny percent.
And a big fish in a small pondand then you become. You're the small
fish in the big pond.
If you're a really good tennisplayer, thank God you can play against

(55:22):
really good tennis players forthe rest of your life and enjoy it,
knowing that you're nevergoing to be the top one. Roddick
or anybody like that. Yeah,yeah. No, yeah. And to be able to
recognize that there is thatlevel. Yeah. I'm never going to be
a Rodan or anything like that,but I'm going to be able to please
myself and I'm pretty successful.
I think you're verysuccessful, Harry. And I think part
of it to me is pushingyourself as hard as we've talked

(55:45):
about and being confident andthen being satisfied. Because I think
sometimes people, they're notsatisfied with where they are. They're
constantly driving Themselves.Or they're constantly trying to be
the person who's like, thenumber one rather than accept where
they are.
My definition of my ownsuccess is I'm pretty good at what
I do, and what I do, I like.There are a lot of people that are

(56:06):
really excellent artists, andyou don't separate them by saying,
he's better than him or he'sbetter than him. They are different
artists, and they are reallygood at what they do. I could never
do what Adam Long does. Idon't think he could ever do what
I do, which is fine. That'sthe way it should be. And that of
being a musician. Wasn't thata fascinating scene when Mozart is
dying in Amadeus? When he'scomposing a symphony and Salieri

(56:29):
is transcribing it, he can'teven get up out of bed.
Mozart was.
And now the wood wins.
All these composers, evenBeethoven, with. Even with his deafness,
devising something where hecould hear the vibration and.
Right. Yeah.
Just what's going on in theirmind. It's almost like it's got to
spill out. This is my mindspilling out onto the score.
Yeah. There's a great teacher,Greenberg, on music, talks about

(56:52):
Western classical music. He'spart of the great courses, but he
talks constantly about whatwas going through their mind when
they wrote these things, whatthey were getting, trying to get.
Staggering stuff. I loveanything that's done well. The guy
that built that wall did it ina day and a half. Yeah. You did great.
I want to thank you for your time.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, don't apologize. I try tostay out of the way. We're on your

(57:15):
turf here. When people comeinto the studio, I say, we're going
to have a conversation in theliving room. Like we're sitting on
the couch.
I've enjoyed talking to you.
I appreciate that.
A lot of it wasn't aboutartwork, but that's fine.
But that's what it kind ofimparts into your work. You can't
separate those things.
No. And, you know, in my offtime now I'm writing my memoirs,
which. Really cool. Everybodylives their lives in specific moments,

(57:37):
and those specific moments arerooted in reality. You knew when
that happened. But then yourbrain makes a narrative to connect
the moments that might not beexactly truthful, but it's close
enough. It's close enough.
Mark, what a privilege. Oh,yeah. To talk to Harry. And had a
great time. We were movingaround. We were in his house. We

(57:57):
went to the studio. We werewalking in a hallway. We were outside
on a covered porch watchingthe birds. Was a beautiful set. And
he's just a tremendousindividual. Last time I was at Busch
Stadium.
I knew you were doing theinterview. I looked at the sculptures
that are down there, andthey're all signed H. Weber. H. Weber.
Every one of them. It'samazing how he's done this. And how

(58:19):
old did you say he is?
He is. I believe he's 83.
That's crazy, because hesounds like he's a young fella.
He does.
He. He's quite a gem from St. Louis.
And what he has contributed toour nation and internationally. There's
things all over the countryand Pretty amazing, man. He never
went to art school. He juststarted drawing when he was 4 years

(58:39):
old. And the rest is history.
In his heart, in his soul.
And it comes right out. Hepours right into it.
Yeah. That's great. Great interview.
Thank you. Thank you. I wantto thank our listeners. If you've
enjoyed this episode, you canlisten to additional [e-mail]
consider leaving a review onour website, Apple Podcasts, Podchaser,
or your preferred podcastplatform. Your feedback helps us
reach more listeners andcontinue to grow. Want to thank Bob

(59:02):
Berthisel for our theme music,our sponsor, Better Rate Mortgage,
our guest, Harry Weber, and cohost Mark Langston. And we thank
you folks for being a part ofour community of curious minds. St.
Louis in tune is a productionof Motif Media Group and the US Radio
Network. Remember to keepseeking, keep learning, walk worthy,
and let your light shine. ForSt. Louis in tune, I'm Arnold Stricker.