Faith is bigger than any fears
A FIGURE THAT IS 1.5, 2 AND 3M IN DIMENSION Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and thei
didn’t have much of that,” says sculptor Anton Smit, about self-assurance. Yet, we’re surrounded by enormously confident bronze statements. Life and life forces are solidly substantiated on an almost indestructible scale, perhaps not right here in Mirrie Prinsloo’s long-look, lots-to-discover Imagine Café, but within glimpsing distance through the doors and windows. We also talk about Faith with and without rivets. That work is dominant today.
Heather and I look into a building next to the café which Anton built for his wife in three weeks to surprise her when she returned to him from walking the Camino de Santiago. It’s a kind of chapel, with Gaudi-like flourishes.
A gallery of local art quickly gives way to a further space of Anton Smit works.
Faith is his statue of a man, open chest to the sky, arms and hands in surrender. “That’s 1.5m Faith, 2m and 3m.”
They also go right down to jewellery size, not only Faith but other Smit heads and a dragon-fly winged figure I keep seeing about, seemingly tripping.
“This Faith over here took 10 000 rivets.”
We’re strolling into the sculpture park and I keep thinking of the Old Rolls’ Spirit of Ecstasy figure, among the other figures and Easter Island heads.
So it feels as though I’ve conjured up a sleek car rumbling over the road. Anton turns to me, eyes the same colour as the Bronkhorst Dam behind him. “That there’s the very latest Rolls Royce.”
Its driver is talking on a handheld cellphone as fluffy chickens career into each other.
Heather and I choose to walk, so Anton takes his scooter. We can’t help but see it as we go, anyway: a seven-metre Faith.
Anton’s uplifted face displays his own wonder at putting things together, like his deft word puzzle constructions on the opposite scale. A cameraman is videoing progress because the Smits will be showing a client in Israel what it might be to have monumental Faith. Lilliputian workmen surround the statue on scaffolding. It dwarfs the neighbouring piece, Apocalypse, too. An afternoon moon peeks through the holes of the Effervescent Masks further up the hill.
I imagine one of the colossus’ upheld palms cradling a Fay Wray but as I look down, I gape at elephantine toenails. This has to be Unshakeable Faith. Anton Smit Sculpture Park, Bronkhorstspruit - 0826537659