My work is mainly a myriad of ideas that I can't seem to keep up with. But I still have a long way to go.
I'm interested in many things in this world, and when it comes to sculpture, at least a few directions. I'll talk about a few of them below, which have taken the form of real projects and are still being developed.

I devoted many years to perfecting my casting technique. Polish foundries, when I was finishing my studies and long after, generally had no idea how to cast sculptures. Especially when it came to intimate, small forms, intended for statuettes, for example. No wonder, since you don't pay for quality, but for weight. I think it's still like that today... Would any of you buy a sculpture by weight? Or paintings by square meters? Or music by decibel level and duration? Of course not. That's why I took up casting myself. I've become so proficient that I can make a bronze casting (using lost wax) with a wall thickness between 3 and 1 mm. And that's no exaggeration. Furthermore, the casting surface is so precise that, aside from machining the sprues and pin holes that hold the core, all I need to do is clean it with a soft wire brush. This means I'm completely self-sufficient when it comes to small molds.

The photos show one of my favorite projects: Pola Negri. The "Pola Negri Award," a prize from the Polish Film Festival Los Angeles, which has gone to many wonderful, famous non-Polish actors who have starred in Polish or Polish-themed productions. Here in the hands of Ion Voight, Scott Willson, and Michael York (Photos from the archives and with permission of the Polish Film Festival)

And this sculpture was created at the Polish Sculpture Center in Orońsko and depicts my daughter Zuzia. The stone was brought from Lake Hańcza, and the work became part of a private collection in Frankfurt am Main.

I first became interested in ceramics during the student strike at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1981. The following years did not allow for the development of what would later become almost a passion. However, soon after, starting in 1984, during a long stay in the wild in the Beskid Niski Mountains, I began experimenting and learning this technique on my own, from scratch, starting with extracting clay from the ground. This makes my experience as rich as it is unique. My first attempts at firing in an earthen kiln were completely unsuccessful. Subsequent attempts led me to purchase an electric kiln, which allowed me to delve deeper into the basics of ceramics. However, the results did not align with my ambitions to create ceramic sculptures. This was during difficult times, when purchasing professional materials and equipment was still almost impossible. Only my encounter with the RAKU technique opened up possibilities that aligned with my vision. But although I have completed numerous firings, more or less successful, it is only now that I can say I know exactly how to use this technique to express what I want to express. The best is yet to come. Works created in recent years are a preview of upcoming projects: "white sculptures" (see gallery), which I call "veiled," and polychrome sculptures composed of multiple elements, usually held together by steel rods.

This is a series of works, created and developed over many years. It began with the fact that until quite recently there were no stores where you could buy ceramic glazes of any color and texture. So I decided to create the glazes myself. They were to be satin-matte, noble, without any shine – so that they would look their best on the sculpture's surface. I conducted dozens and hundreds, if not thousands, of experiments. Often with substances that are no longer found anywhere (e.g., distemper dyes, sold by weight in GS stores), or those seemingly completely pointless (brass filings, sour milk...). The results were mostly poor, either nonexistent, or pathetic. But some of them were surprisingly successful: as if a seasoned painter were mixing wonderful colors on a palette. This naturally led me to think about paintings created in ceramic. Clay, as a glaze carrier, has two properties that fundamentally distinguish it from canvas: its surface can be shaped three-dimensionally, but it cannot be fired too easily as one large, flat piece, because it will simply crack. These characteristics dictated the form of my paintings: a whole composed of many separate pieces, and the creation of textures, impressions, and shapes that extend more or less into space. This, in turn, prompted me to change the term "paintings" to "reliefs."

An additional difficulty, or complication, is the framing. Not every material suits ceramics. Initial experiments with a simple wooden frame were inadequate for the work involved in creating ceramics. For a while, I used waxed, sometimes stained, cardboard, additionally edged with an aluminum band. The ceramics were glued to plywood. It wasn't until 2023 and 2024 that I refined this: the elements are bonded with resin on a mesh, and the frame is made of steel sheet, elegantly black-oxidized or coated with a protected, noble rust. The entire piece is finished externally with a steel band.

One of my favorite contexts in which I think about sculpting is music. Music is close to me because I "practice" it myself and even create it. For me, music is a tangible matter, just like sculpture. This stems from the laws of physics: sound is a mechanical wave, perceived not only by the ears but also by the entire body. Sculpture can sometimes also generate sound. Stone, when touched, rubbed, or worked, is like a musical instrument. Clay, almost silent and silent when wet (which is also debatable), becomes a resonant when struck, sometimes with an almost metallic sound after firing. Using this feature in creating a spatial form enriches it with an additional dimension and meaning.

I don't consider myself an installation artist: all too often, in this genre, I've seen things devoid of value and meaning. However, sometimes I create something that doesn't quite fit the definition of sculpture. This was the case with a project about the nature of clay. I conceived it during a plein-air workshop I led at the CRP in Orońsko. It was a ceramic inverted pyramid made of burnt red clay, placed on its tip on a brick floor. I poured a diluted, also red, clay solution with the consistency of cream into its interior. The water contained in it slowly leaked through the pyramid's walls, leaving a trail on the floor, leaving an increasingly thickening mass inside.

Another example was the project "Beach": a series of ceramic figurines, reminiscent in form of the "Venus of Willendorf," placed on a Baltic Sea beach, at the water's edge. The water washed over the figurines, sinking them deeper and deeper into the sand. They lay motionless, oblivious to time...

Speaking of music, I'm incredibly lucky in my friends. Thanks to them, events like the openings and closings of my exhibitions take on a unique glow. In the photos below: Wiesław Michnikowski, my father, Wiesław Gołas, and Jan Kobuszewski, who performed with Jerzy Derfel at the opening of my exhibition at the Zapiecek Gallery in 2001. The next photo shows Bogdan Hołownia, playing wonderful melodies at the opening of the exhibition at "PROM Kultury" in 2023, followed by Katarzyna Mazur, the host of the discussion, and Roman Dziewoński, who officially opened the event.