Duncan sculptor Ray Scudder made waves at the the 2025 Sculpture Splash at Gorge Park Pavilion in Victoria from April 11 to 13 where he scored second place for his sculpture of an octopus.
"It made really feel really good, and I was quite amazed because there was some really good work in there," said Scudder.
He said the annual show and sale of fine sculpture that is presented by the Township Community Arts Council in collaboration with the Vancouver Island Sculptors Guild inside the Japanese Pavilion at 1070 Tillicum in Esquimalt saw about 700 people on opening day and just over 2,000 over the span of three days. Other local artists who participated this year included Dan Cline, Richard Gibbons, and Bryan Rombough.
"Everyone who participated this year was so friendly, there was never a dull moment," said Scudder. "It was pretty intense, we had people coming through the door right up until the very end."
Scudder, who was born and raised in Mission, said he first fell in love with the beauty of the island, and life on it while attending his brother's wedding in 1974. Six years later he moved to the Island and has been a Duncan resident since 1992.
Scudder, who sees things in pictures, and has always enjoyed building. It was a friend who suggested that he would be a good sculptor while watching him work one day in his shop. Taking his friend's advice he decided to give it a go three years later when he signed up for a symposium that is held in Lake Cowichan each year, which Scudder recalls was very well run. He picked up a piece of alabaster for his first-ever carving which he titled the 'Weeping Soul'.
"It was to commemorate the young women on Highway 16 who had gone missing and emulates sadness and loss," said Scudder. "It turned out very powerful, and made me realize I guess In can sculpt."
Since then Scudder, who is always happy to point those who want to try their hand in the right direction, has been polishing up on this art form for the past 17 years and said his favourite part is how it quiets his mind.
"I just get lost when I'm doing it," he said. "I'm not in a hurry, and it's the stone that tells me when to put the file down. You learn about yourself, and to accept that there are no mistakes, and if you think there is a mistake you work with it. It's a matter of believing in yourself a lot, and trusting that the answers are gonna come."
Scudder said sculpting has taught him confidence, and when working with stone to accept that you cannot know all the answers at once, which is a great lesson for life as well.
"When I first started the octopus, a little voice said, where are you going to go with this," said Scudder. "You have to just keep pushing that tool you are using to create something. I might start by polishing just a six inch square just to see what it is going to look like, and that motivates me and gets me hooked on it, and then there is that certain point where you are just listening to the rock. Then the finesse come in, and that normally takes longer than everything else, because you are not in a hurry, now you are just messing with this creation, it's so much fun."
Scudder's octopus can be viewed at Duncan's Station Street Galley.
"I hope this piece encourages people to learn to appreciate other forms of life," said Scudder. "That's a real hope for the octopus, because they are so amazing, and so intelligent, and capable of disappearing in an instant but are still there, they can even walk on land, and breathe through their skin while doing so, as long as it's wet."
