Kenneth Flynn

Ken's background

Kenneth Flynn was a naval aviator, in active service for 25 years. In 1964, he was on a nine-month cruise “in the vicinity of Laos.” Upon leaving for sea on the carrier Kitty Hawk, the squadrons believed it was ‘just another routine peace-keeping mission.’ However, as it turned out, the Bay of Tonkin marked the beginning of the Vietnam War. During this tour of duty, Flynn never had to kill, but his aircraft “took fire” many times. It’s hard to imagine all those nighttime landings on a carrier that must have looked like a postage stamp without lights—moving on a black ocean.

He received an air medal for attempting to rescue the first prisoner of war taken, whose plane crashed in Laos; he was not able to rescue Chuck Klusmann—but his friend Chuck finally escaped captivity and crawled across the Laos jungle to safety.

Ken vowed if he ever returned home alive, he would buy sculpting equipment, and this thought kept his spirits alive. He returned home a different man from the one who left, a person greatly sobered by what he saw, and yet the artist inside was unscathed, replenished with emotional energy, and ready to work.

First Sculpture

SEAASIAONE.  Bronze on steel with rock base. 1964. 17.5" high, 10" wide, 9" deep.

Kenneth Flynn’s first piece was titled SEAASIAONE—a bronze image, a prisoner of war, kneeling upon stone within barbed wire. What we notice is that the POW has his head bent, but his back is straight. This piece won first place at a California art exposition in 1964. Ken was so modest, he wouldn’t enter his own art, and a neighbor, another artist, took it upon herself to have the piece entered. There’s nothing more encouraging than winning a blue ribbon for your first piece of sculpture.

Shore duty! Upon returning to the East Coast, after 25 years and nine carriers, Ken was able to begin his art career in earnest. While working at the Bureau of Navy Personnel, he found the greatest pleasure in coming home at night to carve wood into shapes from his imagination.

The Process

Ken’s ideas were completely original. He began by carving a figure from wood, and then he hammered roofing nails into the wood. After this, he dripped molten bronze on each steel nail head—drip by drip. You can imagine how tedious this process was, for if the flame got too close, too hot, the steel would melt and distort the nail; and if the welding rod was not kept at an exact distance, the flame would cool, hardening the bronze surface too quickly.

The final product was an object shining like gold. The nails can be seen if one peers inside, but the surface is smooth and gleaming. Imagine the courage it took to burn out the wood, after carving what was a masterwork of wood sculpting. However, this left a lace-like figure, allowing light to come through solid space: A perfect metaphor. A perfect statement. Dark to light.

Ken invented this process, which he termed “the lost wood process,” and eventually he patented his invention. If we think about healing, this is significant, for we can almost believe the sculptor nailed his nightmares repeatedly into the wood surfaces, as if wood would receive his pain and release him from it. His first masterwork, “Sister Mary Corita,” honors a Catholic nun who was active in the Viet Nam antiwar movement.

Powerful images were also made by using shapes already formed by nature. Many of Ken’s pieces began with “found wood” that he then preserved by applying steel and bronze. Freedom within form. We walked the woods to find branches and tree parts for his process. He received critical recognition for transforming nature into art. (Sample pieces are included in this book.) It was said that reason and intuition are combined making up the spiritual statement for this artist. New York art critic Will Grant wrote, “His works are open to the elements. . . . One feels the air of the sun healing these bronze objects. All have a quiet self-containment and dignity.”

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Click the photo below for more views of SEEASIAONE: