Reporter's Inside Stories: An Interview With Sculptor

Reporter: For today's installment of Inside Stories, I'd like to smurf with another famed artist of the Smurf Village, the Smurf whose work is always "taken for granite", as he smurfs. His name is Sculptor Smurf, and if you haven't guessed what he does from his name, he likes to smurf all kinds of sculpture from whatever material he smurfs around the village and in the forest. He was also instrumental in smurfing the first Smurf coin that was part of our money system and the medals that were smurfed for the Smurfic Games Tournament, not counting the Medallion Of Poseidon which was smurfed against us. Today we're going to smurf with him inside his studio while he's busy smurfing on his latest masterpiece.

(Reporter enters Sculptor's studio and sees that he's at work sculpting a nude male Smurf statue intended to be used for the creation of a fountain.)

Sculptor: Ah, welcome, Reporter. You're just in time to smurf what I'm creating for the memorial park fountain. You like?

Reporter: Hmmm, your statue looks rather risque for something that will be smurfed in public. You sure this kind of thing should be smurfed for a fountain?

Sculptor: What a work of art is a Smurf that he should not be smurfed in all his glory? I do not mean any disrespect, but when I smurf at a Smurf's body, the only thing I can see is its beauty, how it's wonderfully shaped and smurfed by Mother Nature herself. He's like an angel smurfed from heaven, so pure and innocent, that the only thing he wants to smurf into this world is joy. It's just unfortunate that there are Smurfs who see something like this and smurf it into such perversity that it was never intended to smurf.

Reporter: It seems that most of your work in sculpture is with the male Smurfs, but there's very few works of Smurfette. Why is this so?

Sculptor: I wish I could say that I love smurfing at the bodies of male Smurfs more than I do a female Smurf's, as if I was born to love a male Smurf instead of a female Smurf. Alas, I find my heart to be smitten by Smurfette, so I can't smurf that for an answer. Truth to tell, it's hard for me to smurf a statue of Smurfette without it seeming to be more risque than that of a male Smurf, so that's why I don't smurf a lot of statues of her, and the ones I have smurfed usually have her clothed.

Reporter: Yeah, one would think that male Smurfs could get away with smurfing less clothes in public than females for some moral reasons that nobody ever really seems to smurf about.

Sculptor: Tapper thinks that this Almighty of his has purposely smurfed the female to be more beautiful than the male so that the male might smurf in love with the female and be united with her as one flesh, as his holy book smurfs. Of course, this beauty cannot be fully displayed unto everyone except unto the male that she would be married to, and only away from smurfing eyes. If I were this Almighty, I would have the female be free to fully display herself to all people and not be afraid, but I guess she would also smurf prey to every male who just can't control what he's smurfing at.

Reporter: So I guess there's some wisdom in a female smurfing in a way that honors and respects her dignity and maidenhood. How is it that you're able to smurf anything you can smurf your hands on into a statue?

Sculptor: I just smurf that kind of feeling when I smurf at a big rock, a smurf of wood, a smurf of clay, or anything else that this is how it's going to smurf out in the end when I'm done with it. It's like smurfing Empath's ability of precognition or something like that. The final product is just waiting in the material for me to smurf it out, like smurfing up a buried treasure. It smurfs a great deal of skill and patience for it to smurf it just as I see it.

Reporter: Do you fear that you'll ever smurf a mistake in your work, Sculptor?

Sculptor: There's always that fear, Reporter, which is why I never rush my work. I like things to be perfect, and I'm sure my customers would want it the same way as well, but perfection isn't something that can be smurfed overnight. Everything that you smurf in my studio is the result of smurfing the time to make sure it smurfs out perfectly.

Reporter: Do you ever find yourself in competition with the other artists in the village, like Painter, Poet, and Scribbler?

Sculptor: I hardly find myself in any competition with them, Reporter, because our talents are so unique like every Smurf's personality around here. The only time we were ever in competition with each other was when Brainy smurfed up the idea of the Golden Smurf Award for "the smurfiest contribution to the world of Smurf". And though there were only like a handful of active contributions that were displayed at the show, most of the Smurfs ended up voting for themselves, probably because they believed that they themselves were smurfy contributions to Smurf society.

Reporter: That was ridiculous, that the whole thing ended in a tie that was only broken by Brainy declaring himself to be the winner of the award.

Sculptor: What's even worse is that it felt like Brainy smurfed it all along to be about awarding himself for being the best something in this village. And then the award itself was just Hogatha smurfing herself into a statuette so that she could smurf her hands on enough Smurfs to make skin smurfener for her dry skin. A good thing Papa Smurf came to rescue us from her and Vanity had suggested for the evil witch to smurf a mud bath so that she could be beautiful...if that was possible.

Reporter: Besides statues, Sculptor, you also worked with smurfing engravings for both the Smurf coin and the Smurfic Games Tournament medals. How did you get smurfed with those jobs?

Sculptor: The Smurf coin was what Trader wanted to smurf so that his fellow Smurfs could enjoy trading like him, but I had no idea that was what he wanted to smurf with the engraving of Papa Smurf's face in a circle in the first smurf. I just think his being the Finance Smurf and the money system was a silly idea that really didn't work out in the end, because it divided the village into two groups of haves and have-nots. The haves got bored with all the money they're smurfing that they couldn't smurf anything with, and the have-nots were smurfing up their homes just so they could smurf up more bags of money. Things got rather ugly until the Smurfs decided they were better off living without money as they did before it was adopted.

Reporter: Thank Smurfness that system ended when it did. So what about the medals that you smurfed for the Smurfic Games Tournament, for the first, second, and third-place winners?

Sculptor: I was all ready with smurfing up the medals with the engraving I have smurfed when Brainy digged up the Medallion Of Poseidon that Papa Smurf got from Argus the wizard when he smurfed away, and thought that it was going to be the Smurfic Games Medal. He smurfed it to Painter, who smurfed it with a fresh coat of gold paint, and I smurfed a Smurf face on it so that it would smurf like a true Smurfic Games Medal. Smithy and I still smurfed the gold, silver, and bronze medals, though, because something in me smurfed that this Smurfic Games Medal that Brainy had found was dangerous. And as it turned out, when Clumsy won the whole tournament and was about to be awarded with the medal, it changed color and revealed itself to be the medallion when Gargamel smurfed the incantation to unsmurf the devasmurfing power of the medallion.

Reporter: Smurf it up to another boneheaded stunt of Brainy Smurf! We were fortunate that Papa Smurf had the medallion buried in the earth before the entire village was smurfed apart by the earthquake.

Sculptor: (laughs) Thank Smurfness for that, Reporter. In the end, though, we still had an award ceremony, with Clumsy smurfing the gold medal, Hefty the silver, and Handy the bronze. I could tell those three were happy to smurf the honors as the team leaders of the tournament, even though Hefty allowed Clumsy to win because his brother Handy was buried in a rockslide during the Smurfathon. I enjoyed that moment of Hefty and Handy being such good sports when winning mattered less to them than friends and family.

Reporter: Smurfing of friends and family, Sculptor, what was it like to grow up alongside your other two brothers, Painter and Poet, when you were just learning how to sculpt?

Sculptor: My Pere Schtroumpf was just such a wonderfully talented Smurf artist who trained both me and Painter, not to mention Scribbler, how to smurf paintings and sketches and sculpture, while Mere Schtroumpf taught everything Poet knew about how to smurf poetry. It's just so amazing what gifted parents we had because I would smurf hours just looking at my Pere Schtroumpf whenever he was alone with a project, and I felt like I have to smurf just like him and smurf it my all with my craft.

Reporter: That must have made losing him and your Mama Smurf to the disease that smurfed away our parent Smurfs really difficult to deal with.

Sculptor: (wipes tears from his eyes) Forgive me, Reporter, it's always difficult to deal with this kind of loss. Even now, it was such an event in my life that smurfed a lot of time to forget, and I had to smurf out all the tombstones for our beloved parents just like the one I have smurfed for Smurfette's pet mouse Squeaky when he died. If it weren't for my friends and for Empath's Papa Smurf helping to smurf things together, I would have wanted to die with my parents because it was so terrible.