Kahlil Gibran (sculptor)
He regularly visited the local public library and enjoyed crafting exotic objects like the scimitar in Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum or the guillotine from Tale of Two Cities.
At eleven, he received Honorable Mention in a national soap-carving contest, and during his senior year at English High School,[4] was awarded the Lawrence Prize for Art.
In 1943, shortly after his study for a mural Entrée á Paradis[5] was awarded the Karl Zerbe prize, he left school in order to apprentice at several craft-related organizations.
Word of the young artist's talent spread, and Gibran briefly honed his skills at the Conservation Laboratory of Harvard University's Fogg Museum.
[8] He finally located a studio at 15 Fayette Street in Boston's Bay Village, where he settled in as a freelancer, restoring and repairing fine art objects during the day, and painting at night.
[10] In another Stuart Art Gallery exhibit, Study of a Head by Kahlil Gibran was described as “the tenuous enterprise of another young Boston mystic".
[11] Soon his paintings appeared at Symphony Hall,[12] along with panels by his mentor Karl Zerbe in a selection of work by contemporary artists titled Fantasy in Art.
[13] By June 1947, a New York Times review of paintings he exhibited at Jacques Seligmann's gallery in the group show, Artists Under 25, acknowledged his efforts with the brief but laudatory comment, “Kahlil Gibran works subtly and effectively in encaustic".
ART news published a John Brook portrait[18] of eleven Boston painters including Karl Zerbe, Reed Champion, Ture Bengtz, Giglio Dante, Maud Morgan, and Lawrence Kupferman.
[19] In her review of this seminal show, Dorothy Adlow,[20] wrote in the Christian Science Monitor: “Kahlil Gibran, who like Mr.David Aronson[21] is 24 years old, paints a Pietà in oil with remarkable technical adaptation of pigment".
Reviewing contemporary New England painters at the Fitchburg Art Center, Ms. Adlow reinforced this image: “The Old Fashioned Bouque’[24] by Kahlil Gibran sets forth once again the sensitive gift of that young visionary.
He has a rare capacity of envisioning intangibles, for conjuring the immaterial in tenuousness and exiguousness of concrete image... the most recent painting Joseph’s Cloak[27] discards the subdued chromatic scheme for a rich palette of colors that sing out movingly".
By June 1949, then married to Eleanor “Elly” Mott a fellow student at Museum School, Gibran began working for the sculptor Ken Campbell[28] during a summer in Provincetown.
With his growing reputation as a magic realist, he formed close friendships with several Provincetown artists, including Varujan Boghosian,[29] Mischa Richter,[30] Giglio Dante,[31] poet Cecil Hemley, and painter/poet Weldon Kees.
Notable is a portrait[35] of the artist with his fish skeleton painting On the Beach shown at Gallery 200 during the original exhibit of Forum 49,[36] and then again, at the Provincetown Art Association's fiftieth anniversary memorial show in 1999.
During the early fifties, Gibran, with the young Boston painter William Georgenes,[37] spent two summers in Nantucket, working on new paintings and exploring new techniques.
New Plastic Medium Used by Painter was Dorothy Adlow's response to Gibran's innovative technique shown at the Margaret Brown Gallery,[38] during the winter of 1952.
The young Gibran had always searched for recordings of early 20th century Arabic singers and instrumentalists, and soon joined a group of devotees of Middle Eastern and Indian music that included Bloom, composer Alan Hovhaness,[43] painter Hermon Di Giovanno,[44] sculptors Frank and Jean Teddy Tock, Dr. Betty Gregory, and, later on, James Rubin, founder of Boston's Pan Orient Arts Foundation.
[48] In the early 90s he took time to self-publish his deeply researched theory illuminating the mystery of the brilliant tonal quality of Stradivarius and other Cremonese fiddle-makers.
Observations On The Reasons For The Cremona Tone appeared in the January 1994 bulletin[49] of the Southern California Violin Makers, with the convincing and tested argument that burnishing the wood face of instruments prior to varnishing created a compressed, non-spongy, and more resonant soundboard, and consequent tonal brilliance and richness.
[57] For one Chestnut Hill mansion designed by Walter Bogner [58] and its adjacent pool house designed by Saltonstall and Morton,[59] now included in a list of National Historic Buildings, Gibran executed a 100-foot welded Corten steel fence[60] surrounding the swimming pool, doorknobs[61] and other hand wrought architectural features throughout the home, culminating with his sculpture Javelier.
[66] A long time admirer and collector of medals, by 1977, Gibran's first significant effort relating to that medium was a bas relief portrait of his cousin for a monument sited in Copley Square[67][68] across from the main branch of the Boston Public Library.
In 1981, Gibran's monumental sculpture the 12 foot bronze Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon[76] was placed on a high Jamaica Plain hill on a Roxbury puddingstone ledge, at the site of the Maronite Church to which the family belonged.
By 1989, during a solo exhibit at Esthetix Gallery on Boston's State Street,[82] the Boston Sunday Globe’s Mark Wilson characterized him as:[83] "A drawer, a painter, a collector, a photographer, a lens maker (he made his own 600 mm f/4.5 telephoto lens for his Nikon), a restorer of musical instruments, a craftsman, an inventor (he has new designs for a furnace, a shotgun shell and a screw driver) and an avid pool player.
Shortly after, Jean and Kahlil Gibran made another special donation when their vast collection of European and American medals was accepted by the Los Angeles County Museum.
The curators of this retrospective As a Man/ Kahlil Gibran,[102] selected forty-five examples, including paintings, musical instruments, sculpture, drawings, inventions, and books.
With a stunning catalog, champagne toasts, and the violinist Joo-Mee Lee [103] playing Gibran's violins, the opening reception resounded with applause.
On April 26, 2014, Gibran's bronze sculpture Ad Astra was dedicated at Childe Hassam Park [109] located on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Chandler Street in Boston's historic South End Neighborhood.
Kahlil Gibran Beyond Borders [114] features more than 200 black and white and color illustrations related to the poet's life and received positive reviews including one by Magda Abu-Fadi from the Huffington Post.
[115] Articles about the sculptor still reveal his reputation as “Golden Hands.” Echoing the 2007 St. Botolph Catalogue that recorded his close friends’ tributes to him is an essay by Joseph Steinfield published in July 2017.
