PUTNAM COUNTY
“Art is dynamite.”
Those were the first words to flash across the screen last Thursday night at The Plaza Arts Center in Eatonton, to start a one-time presentation of “Rock & Chisel,” a bio-documentary of famed sculptor and painter Steffen Thomas.
Filmmaker Jesse Stephen Freeman, who attended the event alongside Lisa Thomas-Conner, youngest daughter of the late artist, said the quote by Thomas “obviously grabs your attention,” and he even considered it for the film’s title.
However, Freeman said he believes “Rock and Chisel” served even better as a title because though Thomas worked in multiple mediums, including painting and metalworks, he remains most famous for his three-dimensional work as a sculptor. “That phrase, rock, and chisel, was also from a poem he wrote,” Freeman added. “He wrote poetry as a hobby.”
Though coproduced by the Steffen Thomas Museum of Art (STMA), founded and opened in 1997 by the artist’s late wife Sara Douglass-Thomas, Freeman stressed he had to raise the money to bring the film to fruition. However, the museum and its foundation gave him plenty of freedom and assistance in putting it together, he added.
He explained Thomas-Conner and STMA provided family videos, recordings, archival footage, and royalty-free imagery, as well as recommended him to various art collectors and other benefactors willing to help fund the project. And they did all this while allowing him the freedom to tell the story as he saw fit.
Freeman said he felt it was important to show Thomas as the man, the artist he was, as one who held clear opinions and beliefs that didn’t always coincide with going along to get along, perhaps epitomized by a long-standing feud with leadership at Atlanta’s prestigious High Museum.
“I think that is important to bring up, not just to try to create a full picture of someone, but also, I mean, I’m no expert in who makes it in art or why, but I feel like that personality stuff is a big part of why (Thomas) didn’t get in some of the museums he maybe should have been in,” Freeman said.
Thomas-Conner said her first viewing of “Rock and Chisel” was “very emotional,” but she immediately thought Freeman had captured the essence of her father’s life and work.
“I thought he just did such an outstanding job of presenting it in a very honest kind of way, a genuine way that my father – and my mother – would’ve been proud of,” she said. “Jesse, he made it such an engaging experience, even funny in places. I think there’s sort of something in it for everyone. It’s not a dreary biography.”
“Steffen Thomas: Rock & Chisel” publicly debuted in February on Georgia Public Broadcasting. To learn more about Steffen Thomas visit the museum at 4200 Bethany Rd., Buckhead (near Madison), or online at steffenthomas.org.