R. Scott Long
Born in Rockford, Illinois, to a homemaker and a Hostess Cupcake delivery driver and print sales rep, Scott was just eight years old when he carved a little sparrow from wood, learning the craft from his Dad- himself a self taught carver. After this initial success, young Scott wanted to carve a chickadee, and built a trap to capture one for use as a live model. The little bird was so stressed from capture that Scott had to set it free. At the age of twelve, Scott tried carving his own likeness in wood, and recalls thinking that it really wasn’t him carving at all, but “as if someone else was doing the carving through him.”
One night, when Scott was thirty, and living in Milwaukee, he was using a meditation technique his mother had taught him as a child to better fall asleep. As he began the meditation, he felt a sudden “circular wave of energy” loop through his body. He recalls immediately standing up, walking out of the room, and down the hallway- experiencing a new phenomenon known as astral projection. The occurrence had a powerful effect on Scott, and still influences the subjects he now explores in his work.
One of the driving mysteries behind Scott’s work is “what are humankind’s unknown capacities and potential, and from where have we come?” Scott still carves little birds as gifts for his beloved partner of twenty years, Betsy, and helps her with construction of the sculptural armatures she envisions as the base for her giant beaded works of art.
