George Thaddeus Saj
George Thaddeus Saj is a sculptor who works in primarily wood creating masks of people and animals.
MessageGeorge Thaddeus Saj lives and works in Montclair, NJ, where he practiced surgery for 31 years. His formal art education started at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts and continued at Dartmouth College. However, Saj realized early on that most artists need a day job and enrolled in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. After residency training and service as a staff surgeon at a U.S. Army hospital in Danang, Viet Nam, he settled in New Jersey. Since his retirement from surgery in 2004, Saj has returned to art full time.His work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Cleveland, Chicago, New York and New Jersey. The University of Southern Florida commissioned six of his bull masks.
Statement
Despite the frantic pace of our lives as we suffer daily media information overload, we function in relative isolation. There is little opportunity for a meaningful exchange of ideas between people from different disciplines, occupations, or walks of life. Yet we all share a common human nature, a common set of intellectual and biological urges, curiosities and experiences. To a greater or lesser extent we share a sense of personal and collective history. We experience pain, pleasure, love, loneliness. We are moved by suffering, desire, envy, contempt, wrath, courage.It is the function of art to define and connect us with our humanity, to jar our memory, to fire the imagination and engage the emotions.
The works displayed on this website are intended to develop a rapport with the viewer, evoke a whimsical or poignant memory or share a private joke. Some are purely decorative or serve as a talisman. Others offer social commentary. Mostly, they are assembled from bits of wood, discarded surgical instruments and household furnishings—commonplace objects placed in unusual juxtaposition intended to produce instantly recognizable images.
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