A great fish Salmon sculpture to grace Orland fish hatchery

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On a sunny April morning, George Motycka stands next to a 7-foot Atlantic salmon in his studio on the banks of the Bagaduce River. The giant fish seems to leap right out of the floor, balancing on its tail, full of life.

The Penobscot sculptor formed the salmon out of clay and it will soon be turned into the largest bronze piece he has produced in a decade of striving to distill the inner spirit of the native animals he loves. “I only wish I had started sooner,” he laments.

Motycka is awaiting the arrival of a team of craftsmen from a Pennsylvania foundry. It’s their task to turn his vision in clay into bronze. After fashioning a mold of the enormous fish, they will truck it south for casting.

Motycka will journey to Pennsylvania to oversee the process of welding the finished form: a heavy metal sculpture that will balance on its tail with all of the grace of the real thing.

“After the welding, I take part in the grinding, polishing and applying of the right patina,” Motycka says, pointing to a small-scale version that has the sheen and color of a live salmon.

In October, “Leaper” will be installed at the Craig Brook Fish Hatchery in Orland to celebrate the recent major expansion there by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. More than a year ago, The Friends of Craig Brook, a nonprofit, community group aiming to raise awareness about the watershed ecosystem, commissioned Motycka to create a work of art that would express humankind’s “spiritual connection with land, air, forests, rivers, streams and the ocean.”

The monument is also Motycka’s tribute to his beloved wife Dale who passed away a year ago. The inscription at the base of the sculpture reads: “In memory of my wife Dale whose inspiration was in my hands.”

“I believe she did this with me,” muses Motycka.

The Penobscot artist’s light-filled studio is a tumult of power tools large and small, wires, hardware, sketches, photos and artworks in varying stages of production. The eye is drawn to dozens of bronze sculptures of local species: harbor seals, whales, dolphins, even a cougar. Here Motycka painstakingly shapes and carves clay around an armature of wires until he achieves smooth lines, lifelike proportions and a sense of action and vitality.

“I struggle with every pound of clay I put into place. It takes me many attempts to get what I want. I’m never totally satisfied, and I understand that’s good; it keeps you on your toes all the time. When I get a piece back from the foundry, I can feel disgusted with it. But I ask others for their opinion, and they don’t see the error that I see. I try to make a 360-degree piece work so that wherever you stand, you see that animal in motion. I want to convey its essence.”

Motycka is self-trained, but counts himself fortunate to have had good mentoring from other Maine artists, fellow devotees of the wildlife of his adoptive state. His works are in great demand. MBNA owns several pieces. The owner of the Miami Dolphins and the Florida Marlins has some of his bronzes. His creations are in private collections in England, Italy, France, Japan, Hawaii, Tahiti and South America. His work is shown in galleries in Northeast Harbor, Connecticut and Florida, though he doesn’t like to “have the stuff too far away. Connecticut is far enough.” He sells everything he makes.

Motycka, who still has a trace of a New York accent, came to Maine in 1945 after serving in World War II. He was with a friend on a deer-hunting trip and fell in love with the state.

Back then, there was nothing but dirt roads and kerosene lamps. At the time, Motycka was earning his living in a New York construction business, like his father before him. He worked his way up from helper to service construction manager in 12 years.

But his heart was in Maine.

“I made as many trips to Maine as I sensibly could do. At that time it was a 16 to 18 hour drive! That goes to show you how I love the state,” he recalls. “My devotion became deeper and deeper. As the years went by, I longed to finally move here.”

By 1969, Motycka had tired of the pressures of the New York construction industry.

“I couldn’t stand it after a while. My guts were coming out. I was making some damn good money, but I folded my tent, came here and started building a cabin. I was so desperate to move to Maine, I didn’t even think about making a living.”

Things fell into place and the New Yorker found a way to make a living doing construction work.

“I was very fortunate to be accepted by natives who knew that I loved Maine – on their terms. I left New York, with its concrete sidewalks and skyscrapers, and came to enjoy the nature that Maine offers. I didn’t bring ideas of changing anything in any way. I didn’t want to take away something that, in my opinion, made Maine lovable.”

Motycka’s talents and values are deeply rooted, filtering through several generations. A clue lies in the handmade sign, prominently displayed on his studio wall, which reads, “Bohunk Power.”

“That’s my humorous way of advertising my Czechoslovakian-Bohemian ancestry,” reveals Motycka. His great-grandparents emigrated from Europe in the mid-19th century, settling as Americans in lower Manhattan. Subsequent generations of his family moved out to Centerport, Long Island, where Motycka was raised among potato farmers and fishermen.

“Much of my youth was spent in a row boat,” he says, attributing his love of marine mammals to childhood excursions in sight of seals, dolphins and even an occasional minke whale.

Motycka remembers hearing his great-grandmother speak Czechoslovakian and preach commitment to the United States.

“They were Americans. That was driven into them,” he says. “The first born here may have spoken two languages, but they respected the English language. Their parents made them believe they were Americans first.”

Some old-world traditions survived.

“One hundred years ago, whatever you did was a father-son activity. You followed your father into farming, art, stonecutting. For several generations, the men earned a living installing marble facades on the big buildings in New York City. When the demand for marble died away, those skills died with the [his] great-uncles. Their children didn’t follow them into the same careers.

But the great -uncles’ carving skills live on.

“When I started to do some of this artwork, I remembered my mother telling me that one of my great-great-grandparents was an art professor at the University of Prague. I thought to myself, ‘Maybe this is why I love art so much.’ I would go to museums where I could see paintings or sculpture, and dream about doing this stuff, wishing I had enough talent to just entertain myself. I guess this deep desire finally brought out my attempt to make art. I started doing a couple of oil pictures.”

Motycka’s early oil paintings of Maine woods and fields hang in his living room. Just outside are the inspirational scenes: fields, woods and the tidal river.

Around 1980, Motycka became friendly with a decoy carver, Bill Conway.

“While visiting with Bill, I was learning how to carve, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. I said to him a number of times, ‘I wish I could do a whale.’ He said, ‘You can do a whale!’ So I glued up a couple of pieces of basswood to get the thickness I wanted, and I sketched on it a side view and started hacking away on it. When we were all done I thought I had a pretty good rendering of a humpback whale.”

Carving replaced oil painting. One thing led to another. An admirer of his woodcarving asked him for some large-scale dolphins for an 85-foot yacht he was building in Florida. He wanted a 3-D pod of dolphins leaping off the wall – in bronze.

It was a turning point. Never one to shirk a challenge, Motycka started to research the casting process.

“I didn’t know the first thing about creating a bronze. I pursued the project, began to read everything I could; searched out someone doing bronze sculptures: Forest Hart.”

Hart, a Monroe artist, became a good friend.

“He’s one of the top 10 in the country,” says Motycka. “He gave me much help and encouragement.”

After completing the bronze of dolphins, he abandoned woodcarving.

“This is the medium I want to work in. I look at a piece of finished bronze and it does something to me, it conveys something,” he explains. “The starting point, clay, is forgiving. If you make a mistake you can scoop it away and put a new piece in. Wood is not forgiving. If you make an error in a piece of wood carving, it becomes firewood.”

Having lived in Penobscot for 30 years, Motycka doesn’t mince his words, noting the changes he has observed to the town and environment.

“Communities are not native anymore. The influx of people ‘from away’ is changing things. They can spend $300,000 on a house worth $20,000,” he laments. “So many people around here I met spending time in the woods. … There was great understanding and respect for each other. For instance, Bubbles and Elmer Wardwell taught me to hunt. I would ask them about Maine. They would come right back and ask me ‘How do you live in New York?’ We learned to love and respect each other. There was great communication.”

If some of the rural camaraderie is gone for Motycka, his art has filled the gap.

“Through my art, I speak for things that may not be around in a couple of generations,” he reflects. “For instance, I’m trying to make the public aware of what a great fish the salmon is and how it’s part of our heritage in Maine, and our heritage tells us who we are.”

Stressing that he’s not an environmentalist, Motycka nonetheless believes in preservation. He hopes that the Atlantic salmon rebounds, but suggests that ‘if it doesn’t, I’ve left a 7-foot salmon which future generations are going to recognize. They’ll know that their great-grandfather used to catch this great fish.”