Notable Masters and Tools of their Trade, Artwork by Mark Blaskey

“It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it.”

      -Nelson Mandela

These hands and the tools they are holding create a better world for us here at this time. From the gavel of a judge and the brush of a painter, to the hands of a massage therapist and the microphone of a broadcaster, these hands show that even in the high-tech 21st century, it is still the work of hands that give our society beauty, health, grace, and depth.

My work for the last 17 years has been metal sculptures mostly showing humans in 2D profile form. Almost two years ago I was commissioned to make a sculpture in memory of victims of clergy abuse to be installed at Holy Ghost Church in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. I started working with modeling hands for that project and then six months ago when that project finished I had the vision of casting hands holding tools. The first hand I cast was that of my niece, Sarah Blaskey, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Miami Herald, holding a pen and notebook. From there the ideas just came flowing in–as if the hands were just waiting there all along for me to cast them.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

A bit like Grandma Moses, Mark Blaskey came to art late in life, but unlike her, he didn’t wait until he was 79. Mark
started working with his dad–a math teacher, carpenter, and welder–when he was 12. Mark attended the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and majored in Civil Engineering. Along the way he spent five years in the
marching band and had other courses including beekeeping and music theory. Mark came to Eau Claire in 1979 and worked on typical civil engineering projects: dams, sub-divisions, watersheds, and buildings. While engineers often get the rap of not being or having an aesthetic, Mark always tried to make his designs pleasing. Certainly not an artistic endeavor, nonetheless, his career taught him the principles of form, function, details, and materials.