Tag: Humanitarian

"Fortuna" One-of-a-Kind Bronze Sculpture

Greek Goddess of Fortune, Chance, Luck & Fate

Grand Providentia United

The story of Fortuna is as colorful and animated as the living koi fish she was patinaed to resemble. When I sculpted the original in clay, I had an entirely different vision and concept for the finished piece than what it has turned out to be. I’m so pleased to have let this one evolve into what she has become. Fortuna has metamorphosized from a sculpture that was intended as cynical commentary on the superficial pursuits of man into a beacon of good fortune and a recognition of the astonishing beauty of nature on our planet. Originally, this surrealistic representation of the fish as a metaphor for greed and selfish motivations was titled “Suckerfish Ball”. I’d had a vision of a fish standing on its head and writhing like a flickering candle flame. That was the vision out of which the ball and fish form evolved. The addition of dollar signs and stars and the stripe around the ball were intended to represent money, fame and play respectively, but these additions were all envisioned through the distorted lens of my cynical outlook at the time. I’m truly grateful that my outlook has changed dramatically since then!

“Fortuna” and “Suckerfish Ball”

“Suckerfish Ball” is the only other sculpture on the planet that is nearly identical to “Fortuna”. They’re pulled from the same mold, so that’s to be expected. The major difference between them is that the fish figure on the first casting was poured in white bronze which gives it the shiny silver look. “Suckerfish Ball” was purchased years ago and now resides in the collection of Phillip and Lynn Rogers. In my opinion “Fortuna” is the stronger piece of artwork. Not only is it warmer in color and concept, but it is also invested with positive energy and designed to bring good fortune to any home where it is being displayed. Now, those may sound like the words of a snake-oil salesman, and I could see why some folks might scoff at the notion of a good luck charm, but I can’t see where the harm is with a little bit of positive superstition being peddled between friends!

Physical Properties of Fortuna

Fortuna – Bronze casting mounted on cream colored marble base (pentagonal). The patina on this bronze is one of its most striking features. The opaque and creamy tones of the koi fish contrast nicely with the details of bronze dollar signs and the band around the ball. This was a sophisticated patina to perform given the fact that a patina finish can’t be built up like a paint job. The color that adheres to the metal is still only a few microns thick. It’s similar to a smoked glass process where what you get to stick is what you get to keep.

Dimensions: 27.5″ H x 10″ W x 8″ D ~ Weight: 32 lbs.

Approximate time involved: 180 hours from concept to completion.

Price: $9,500.00 USD – Includes metal pedestal shown in photos.

An Investment in the Future of Our Planet and Our People

The sale of “Fortuna” will forward the cause of the “Grand Providentia Projections” as it will allow my wonderful Dani and I to establish our physical home together on God’s green Earth. We’ve been growing our love (online) for almost two years now and we long to be married and live together somewhere in the USA. Together we are unstoppable, just as the GP Projections will be unstoppable with the collective positive intentions of our friends and supporters worldwide.

Almost one year ago (10/25/2025), I displayed “Fortuna” along with “Providentia”, “Return to Hope” and “Monkey Runs Amok” at an art festival sponsored by the The Landings Art Association and the Village Library at the Skidaway (Island) Village Green. Daniela shared in the ambience of the event with me, via Messenger facetime, during quiet times on that beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Head Tales

Casting Dark Shadows #4

Grand Providentia United

Chapter 4

~ Attracting Ghoul Friends ~

For me, the payoff of a nightmare almost always comes in the moment of waking up. Especially if I wake to birdsong and sunshine. I can usually shake off even the most diabolical of night frights quickly in the light of day. But when it’s too early to get up and I know I’ll be going back down for more of the same, all I can really do is try to appreciate the entertainment value of my frightful nocturnal imaginings. There is a thrilling rush of adrenaline that comes when I awaken from a mind-bending vision of abject horror. When I was young, I gradually became addicted to that rush. Being hooked on fear, I would look forward to the next nightmare, hoping only that it would be more terrifying than the last. I was rarely disappointed. Eventually, my mind created a dream routine that would ease me out of the darkest reaches without the shock of being physically jolted into a sitting position in my real-world bed. The routine soon became my favorite part of every scary dreamscape escape. I offer up another recurring nightmare from early childhood to fill you in on the devilish details of the routine.

I find myself standing next to an antique potbelly woodstove that my mother is trying to light up – it’s a gloomy little room, cold and damp – foggy outside and foggy inside. Is it fog, smoke, or an army of ghosts filling this place? – mom is cursing – the fire won’t start – “Stay here Scott, I’m going to get some firewood.” – the room suddenly feels fragile, like a thin-skinned tent – I follow my mother to the screen door and latch it with an equally fragile hasp – as I’m backing away from the door, it dawns on me that I am no safer inside of this wicked crate than I would be outside of it – I know what’s coming – I’m powerless to stop it – my mom comes screeching back to the door with superhuman speed, crazy sharp claws, cruel looking fangs, and hair sticking straight out in all directions – it isn’t my mother, it’s an apocalyptic lunatic. Her tortured howl is maddening – I know the screen won’t hold for more than a second – I know that a second is all I need – my ritual of escape takes the lead and the relief is immediate – I curl into a ball and fly backwards through the air – spinning around, rolling forward and taking control – flying, rolling, out of the darkness and towards my house – bursting through the back door at full speed – up the narrow stair case and down the hall – in the instant that I land in my bed, I’m awake, and I know that I’m safe. Once again, I had left the shock of the night terror where I thought it belonged, deep down inside. What I failed to realize is that the depths would keep getting deeper to accommodate for the growing horde of monsters I was routinely breeding and feeding with my swiftly accumulating fears.

“Dream Wand”
acrylic on carved wood over cricket cage.

The fight was a mismatch from the very start. These demons were in an entirely different weight class than me. Anyone with a modicum of sense would surely have told me so. But I never told anyone about my plans to confront the blackness, except for the God within me, and I was fairly confident God would always have my back. If not, I thought, ‘How in the hell do I keep making it back to my bed in the morning?’

In the youngest years of my life, the daytime hours were filled with adventure, exploration and wonder. I would spend as many hours as I was allowed to, playing in the tattered woodland areas around town, wading through the rivers and runoffs, digging in the dirt for worms and antique bottles, and crawling through the rainwater drainage pipes beneath both Mill and Main Streets. When mom and dad decided I was old enough to sleep in a tent in our backyard, the adventures often continued well past the witching hour. Slinking through Hope in the darkness was a lot less scary when your friends were there with you, so usually the tent in our backyard was filled with as many friends as the tarpaulin floor could accommodate. As I recall, my older brother and I would argue over who’s turn it was to sleep out in the tent on any given night, but we soon realized that the overflow could always sleep on the ground underneath the stars. At one point we must have had upwards of fifteen wayward boys, and sometimes one wayward girl, marauding through the streets of Hope Village under the dark cloak of night.

Living in Presence

An Abstract Theory of Intentional Time Travel #1

Grand Providentia United

Chapter 1 – Traveling into the past and back home again.

All of our memories about the past, at least the ones that are still available to us, can be recalled audibly and replayed visually within our minds, but only to the extent and accuracy that our minds will allow us to remember them. All of our memories have been colored by our personal perspectives, preferences, and the emotions we were feeling at the time the memory was stored. It seems to me that excessively painful, or exceedingly pleasurable, memories take longer to fade, but they are also more likely to be distorted by the emotions we were feeling when we experienced the actual event. Another person who was present and experienced the same event may have an entirely different recollection of what happened. In my opinion, that is one of the most wonderful things about memories – they are not an objective portrayal of the event, but instead they are mental constructs – reenactments that have been specifically designed to help each of us process our life experiences in the most effective way possible. If we learn to seek insight through the painful memories and then willfully release them, knowing that we have gained all the potential for understanding locked in those memories, we can set ourselves free from the pain of our past and bring ourselves closer to being present in the current moment. On the other hand, we can choose to nurture and hold on to the memories that bring us joy and remind each of us of who we truly are. We can learn to archive and selectively preserve memories that serve us well whether they are painful or pleasurable but grounding ourselves in the present moment is the key to using our memories for intentional time travel.

“An Object in Motion”

This is the first chapter of a three-part series describing An Abstract Theory of Intentional Time Travel. Skeptics, cynics and critics, feel free to speak your minds. These thoughts were brought to you by the collective consciousness of humankind.

Update: I’ve added a second film to my YouTube channel. It’s a promotional film about the “Return to Hope” bronze sculpture that I recently repatined and put up for sale. Here is the link in case you’re interested – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyS4elkdsyg&t=46s

Living in Presence

An Abstract Theory of Intentional Time Travel #2

Grand Providentia United

Chapter 2 – The time is now ~ ad infinitum.

Traditionally, concepts of time travel seem to be centered around movement of a physical form, namely the human body, from one specific moment to another along a timeline. The timeline imagined may include multiple dimensions, but more often than not, the concept is simplified by its adherence to a widely accepted belief that there is only one timeline, the timeline of our shared human history. The most common imaginings of time machines have included dials and switches that allow the time traveler to select a specific time, either in the past or the future, that they would like to move their physical form to within the time-space continuum. Usually, this movement cannot technically be equated to movement at all, considering the fact that the time traveler is consistently imagined as arriving at another point along the timeline in the exact same location as they were when they initiated the travel sequence. At this moment in time, I invite you to imagine a whole new theory of time travel – one that is as simplistic and realistic as it is complicated and extraordinary. Based on the concept of a continuous now, this new theory of time travel is available to every human being who is willing to explore the connection between our conscious awareness and what happens next on the timeline of our individual and collective life experiences.

There was a time in my childhood when I thought this was a magic river. Every time I visited its banks, I would be filled with giddy anticipation as to what color the water would be this time. As I matured, I realized that the colors were waste dyes from the textile mill upstream. I revisited this river when I was shooting scenes for the film “Return to Hope”. While shooting this photo, I remember feeling both saddened and hopeful simultaneously. It made me sad to see all of the rubbish thrown in the water over the years, but also hopeful, noticing that nature was reclaiming the river itself – restoring the quality of the water and reviving the abundance of life that inhabited these waters before they were polluted by the irresponsible acts of a few misguided individuals.

In this moment of now, a moment that we are all experiencing simultaneously, yet experiencing it in as many different ways as there are human beings on the planet, there is a constant and undeniable movement of energies. We are each perceiving these constantly moving energies from our own limited perspective and through the limited capabilities of our five senses. If we allow ourselves to be adventurous enough to include a sixth sense, that of our conscious awareness, we immediately broaden our perspective, and we effectively open our third eye to the true nature of the energies in motion during each and every moment of now. When we witness these energies in motion, and we recognize that we are indeed traveling with time itself, then each moment of our lives becomes much more meaningful. If we learn how to read the energies we are experiencing as we move from the past into the future within the moment of now, then we can more accurately predict what is going to happen next on our timeline. As the moments pass, while we are retaining a conscious connection with the energies in motion, and we also remain present and aware, it becomes apparent that we are traveling through time involuntarily, and we always have been. With our new understanding of the abstract theory of time travel embraced, it becomes so much easier to relax and enjoy the ride.

This contemporary philosopher, William MacAskill, penned a decidedly positive prediction about what our collective future has in store for us. I truly enjoyed the book because it was helpful in relieving basic fears about our tendency to destroy more than we preserve.

I am sincerely grateful that you’ve taken the time to read this online journal. Thank you for being here in the moment of now!

Living in Presence

An Abstract Theory of Intentional Time Travel #3

Grand Providentia United

Chapter 3 – The Future is a Succession of Present Moments

The first time I attempted to be mindfully present, I was only able to stay in that state for a few seconds and then my mind returned to its usual whirlwind of habitual thinking. But, for those few seconds, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Instantaneously, I realized that life wasn’t as serious or complicated as I had always believed it to be. I came to the understanding then, that the present moment was not nearly as intimidating when it was emotionally detached from the past and the future. Previously, every moment of now had been engulfed in regrets from the past and fears of what might happen in the future. Now that I could see the present moment in its simplest form, without all the weight of past and future, I found it much easier to accept whatever each consecutive moment had to offer. As I became more practiced at the act of staying present, I also learned how to separate and evaluate the pains and the pleasures as I was experiencing them, during each passing moment. This made both the pleasurable and the painful experiences easier to appreciate emotionally. Knowing that a hardship in the moment does not need to be compounded by dredging up and attaching every similar moment from the past, gives us an opportunity to treat ourselves with empathy and compassion, even during our most traumatic or tragic moments. There is an amazing feeling of peace that comes when you learn how to unburden yourself of regret and worry, especially if you’ve been carrying around the weight of that emotional baggage for most of your life. In my life, even pleasurable moments were often spoiled by past and future. If I was feeling pleased about anything at all, I would seek out memories of past failings to justify why I didn’t deserve to be happy now. If that didn’t bring me down enough, I would look forward in fear to when the feelings of pleasure would end. Because, eventually, they always end. Or that’s what I thought back then. Now, the act of being present has become a choice that I make over and over again, in each passing moment, not because it’s habitual, but because it is a much more enjoyable way of life. And that’s not all. The moment of now has the potential for a much greater payoff than just making our lives more peaceful and enjoyable than they were when we were filling them up with all of that bad mojo from the past and future. The present moment can also aid us in the fulfillment of our goals and promote the manifestation of our most treasured dreams.

“Beach Gnomes in Paradise” sculptures by S.M.art Castings & Sculpture Services, LLC
Photo by Kevin Moore.

The more you live in the now, and consequently, the less you live in the past and the future, the easier it becomes to perceive the causal nature of your thoughts and actions as you work through them. Practicing mindfulness in the now, we can learn to watch ourselves as we live out our life stories. If we want to achieve a particular goal, we understand that we must move in the direction that has the best potential of getting us there. Before we can even move though, we must decide that we are willing to face certain challenges along the way. Is it worth the effort? Bringing that question to our past experiences to help us decide whether it may have a favorable or unfavorable outcome is certainly a valid course of action. As long as you are not looking back to find excuses not to move forward. So many times, I’ve talked myself out of something, because I’ve either failed to achieve it in the past or looking back I see that I’ve never had the courage to attempt it in the first place, so I decide to abandon the goal and settle for less. Looking to the future, while staying firmly grounded in the now, we can make wise choices and take the appropriate actions to get us where we want to be. The more goals we achieve, the more practiced we become at seeing the road signs of success as we are painting them. The present moment becomes a time machine, having the potential to transport us into a more predictable future. And still, the only time we really ever have is now. I’ve chosen to be present, right here, right now.

Presently letting go of the “Anonymous Self-Portrait” (1994). Speaking of excess baggage from the past, I’ve been carrying around this handsome fella for almost thirty years. If you would like to know more about this piece and hear the story behind it, just click on the link to see the short promotional film I produced in an effort to market this sculpture. I’m motivated to make this sale!

“Anonymous Self-Portrait”

Thank you for spending your now, here, on the “Grand Providentia United” blog site. Stay tuned for some extraordinary manifestations in the moments to come. I haven’t yet been able to raise the funds to embark on the “Florida to Maine Expedition to Gather Film Content”, but within the coming week I’ll be heading north, to Savannah first, and then hopefully toward Hope to spend the final weeks of summer with friends and family in Rhode Island. The fall is just ahead, and coursework will begin in early September at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I am extremely excited about what comes next! For now, I will continue to march through this life transition with patience, persistence and flexibility, from one moment to the next, until the future is now.