PILAR IN BRONZE

I love the quality of Anglers Journal, especially the slant toward making everything in it a bit of art. High quality, to my mind. On that note, I thought you might enjoy my latest bronze sculpture. It’s Ernest Hemingway’s Pilar fighting a marlin in the Gulf Stream, circa 1938. The foundry worked on it for six months. The piece is about 40 inches long, 14 inches wide, a foot tall and probably weighs 50 pounds. It is mounted on mahogany.

Sculpture is the culmination of my life’s experiences. When I was a teenager we moved from Fort Worth to Corpus Christi, Texas. On our very first fishing trip out of Port Aransas we began trolling, knowing no better, between the jetties. My brother caught a tarpon. We, too, were hooked. At University of Texas, I was an English major. I was passionate about literature and read all of Hemingway’s stuff. Naturally, his books and short stories about fishing were fascinating to me.

Having been in the arts all my life, a lover of literature and wooden boats, and a boat captain, Pilar was an unsurprising expression of those experiences. I mostly paint watercolors these days, as they are easiest to do on a boat, but I decided to try my hand at bronze sculpture. Pilar is my third piece.

Jackson Ehrlich Beaufort, South Carolina