Issue 1 Final Draft 1

Four Carvings
By Dr. Robert Martuza
MD, Professor and Chief of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital
When I was 11 years old, my father died in an accident in the coal mines. My mother
raised me and had bad migraine headaches. I became interested in the brain and,
after seeing a TV show called “Ben Casey” decided to become a neurosurgeon
and ultimately became the chairman of neurosurgery at Georgetown University
and at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Clinically I specialized in surgery
for complex brain tumors and my research dealt with defining the genes for the
tumors of neurofibromatosis and developing genetically-engineered oncolytic
viruses for the treatment of brain tumors and other cancers.
My love of sculpture goes back to high school days when I first saw Michelangelo’s
“Pieta” but it was only recently that I had time to pursue this art. I sculpt in clay,
bronze and stone whichever is best to express the idea of the work. Being a surgeon,
I am very interested in hands and try to incorporate them into most sculptures if
possible. Hands are a lot more action-oriented than faces. Hands gesture, point,
cut, shake, sooth, hold, comfort, throw, etc. Additionally, faces (and in particular
areas around the nose, cheekbones, and eyes) immediately identify someone as
being of Caucasian, African, Asian, or other descent and often as male vs. female.
In contrast, hands are figurative and can be very emotionally expressive and yet
somewhat abstract and more general than faces in that they can be anyone’s hands.
More information and images of various sculptures of mine can be found
at twelvelanterns.com but one of my personal favorites is called “Passion of a
Surgeon”. This series in bronze and marble is about the life of an academic surgeon
(me) and deals with teaching, patient care, research, and ultimately retirement.
It purposely has some religious overtones in that I have always looked upon
neurosurgery as a mission, not as a business. Indeed, the mission of neurosurgery
is quite lofty: to heal the sick, make the blind see (pituitary tumors; orbital
meningiomas), the deaf hear (acoustic neuromas; auditory brain stem implants),
and the lame walk (spinal discs and tumors). Thus, the background is from the
Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament) in the shape of presumed tablets of the ten
commandments of Moses and the foreground from the New Testament done in
a style reminiscent of the Passion of the Christ as seen in the stations of the cross
on the walls of a Catholic Church. He is whipped and cut, he falls and is consoled
by the women, on Golgotha there is a moment of belief and disbelief, and finally
after death, there is a rebirth or resurrection.
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