Deborah Hodder has been making wonderful clay sculpture since before the year 2000, when she was given the Emerging Artist Award from the Shemer Art Center and Museum in their show of that year. She has spent this entire century diligently proving that the award was richly deserved. For myriad examples, please do an Internet search on “Deborah Hodder sculpture.”

So this is a fan letter to her, with love, respect and gratitude for her friendship and for her artistry. Many sculptors carve figures with skill and grace. Deborah sculpts souls, and she does it with quiet passion and gentle might. (Note: the phrase “gentle Might” in my poem refers to both Power and Possibility.)

I only wish this page of mine had even a shadow of the dignity and grace that Deborah has. It is barbaric. It is an awful pun on the now-dated phrase “Hotter than a two-dollar pistol,” which alludes to a cheap mail-order firearm that becomes excruciatingly hot when used. (Note that my spot illustration above is of the type of fake pistol which produces a cigarette-lighting flame when you pull the trigger.) And my drawings of her sculpture, and of her, do not begin to do them and her justice. I hope that viewers will see through the crudity to the love and respect at the heart of this thing. More than that, I hope, Friends, that you will do that search and then see and enjoy her sculpture.

Hodder than a 2 Dollar Pistol

Humanity, True Love, conductance, sleep
Of such her sculpture croons, with friendly Hi
Dimension and evolvement lives and keeps
Delineation of a gentle Might
Enshrined and hewn in clay, arpeggio
Reveals 2 us a carnival of Soul