Alan Newberg, World on Fire: Guernica, Gaza, Ukraine, Somolia, California, 2025, Black walnut wood, 72 x 36 x 30 in

Alan Newberg describes art as both a way of thinking and a way of doing-an evolving process of responding to moments in life that demand attention. For him, each artwork emerges through hundreds or even thousands of decisions, gradually giving form to feeling. In this sense, process itself becomes content, with finished works carrying traces of their own making across time and space.

Working across sculpture in steel, clay, wax, cast metal, and carved wood, Newberg finds that material directly shapes meaning. Steel tends toward abstraction and precision, while clay and wax invite more fluid, representational forms. Wood, by contrast, offers a sensuous and responsive material encounter, especially in its subtractive carving process, where the form must be discovered within the block.

In World on Fire, carved from a six-foot black walnut log, an unexpected pocket of decay transformed the work's direction. What began as an abstract composition of shifting, plank-like forms became charged with narrative when the eroded cavity evoked imagery reminiscent of Picasso's Guernica. This encounter redirected the piece into a response to contemporary turmoil, revealing how chance, material resistance, and perception converge to generate meaning in his practice.