DAVID R. SODERBERG
Biographical Statement
From his earliest years in Afghanistan, India and Thailand, David R. Soderberg, b.1947, has pursued self-directed discovery in creative writing, art, classical music, higher mathematics, and theoretical physics. Before teaching himself Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata, he was composing his own music and produced a weekly “World” magazine which he hawked to his parents for a nickel. At the same time, he was producing accurate illustrations of human anatomy in both clay and colored pencils, thus forming an early foundation for his work in figurative bronze sculpting. Noticing that Africa and South America have interlocking coastlines (an artistic observation), he concluded that they must once have touched, thus rediscovering the theory of Continental Drift while in 5th Grade. He raced through High School in Bangkok in 2 ½ years by teaching himself Geometry, Algebra, Calculus, and Relativity, but refused to jump into college, preferring to continue his independent studies in all the above interests. And, in the middle of college, he again took an unusual path, returning to Bangkok for a year to think, to write novels and poetry, to draw, and to photograph the distinctive riverfront culture.
David’s unconventional approach to mastering art included 5 round the world trips (encompassing major art museums and cultural treasures) and 15 years in Asia and the Orient before he was 21; art classes at Yavapai Community College and the Scottsdale Artists School; and intensive study in his brother John’s studio in Camp Verde. He has been sculpting professionally for many years. After retiring from side careers in mathematics, technical writing, and programming, David was awarded a scholarship in the Master of Arts program at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, but elected instead to care for his invalid father-in-law in the beautifully sculpted Palouse hills, home of the Appaloosa horse. He continues to write novels and poetry, as well as an occasional musical composition, and it is this groundswell of creativity, as a musician and as a poet, that most deeply informs his art.
For after all the world tours and galleries and museums and classes and ateliers and en plein airs and open lifes, David continues to believe that:“Art is poetry of the eye and heart, not the jackboot clunking of blind authority. The powerful yearnings of the inward heart are expressed in the miraculous music of form that can and should make brothers and sisters of us all. Each of us, at heart, is a poet sculpting a river of meaning through life’s resisting canyon cliffs.” What is poetry then? One of Mr. Soderberg’s poems concludes with this answer:
Poetry is the last tiny bubble of significance
Bursting up above a Titanic grave
Years after the ice had melted
Into silence
And we had all rowed away.