Another Kahlil Gibran was my neighbor. "The Prophet" Kahlil Gibran died in 1931. His cousin, and godson, with the same name, was my neighbor for 15 years in Boston. He was a neighborhood treasure, a sculptor, and a friend. He died last year at 85.
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Kahlil Gibran, Boston sculptor and cousin to famous poet, dies
April 14, 2008 04:13 By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff
Sculptor and painter, inventor and writer, Kahlil Gibran nourished creativity since he was old enough to mold clay with his hands, sometimes selling for pennies the tiny animals he fashioned while sitting on a curb in the South End when he was only 4.
"I believe talent is a grace," he told the Globe in 1967. "You don't deny it, you don't affirm it. But if you don't work at it, you can lose it. The only sin is in squandering talent."
Internationally honored for his work, Mr. Gibran was at home in many disciplines. From Copley Square to the South End and Jamaica Plain, his outdoor sculptures trace a map of Boston's neighborhoods. A tripod he designed is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are in galleries, museums, and private collections across the country. And with his wife he penned a biography of his cousin, the poet Kahlil Gibran, who wrote "The Prophet" and for whom Mr. Gibran was named.
Robust and active until his final hours, Mr. Gibran died early Sunday in Massachusetts General Hospital of heart failure, not long after going to the emergency room because he was feeling ill. He was 85 and had lived in the South End most of his life.
A restless imagination drew Mr. Gibran to many facets of the fine arts and took him down avenues some artists might shun. He restored musical instruments and for his own photography once designed and built a 600mm lens. A childhood bereft of money had turned him to a life of invention.
"He was a spellbinder," Jean English Gibran said of her husband, speaking from their home in the South End. "This house has his signature on it. He made everything: He made the table where we sat, the desk where I work. He was a welder and made our saltshaker. When he was young, he didn't have a penny. If he saw something that he loved, he'd make it."
Concentrating on painting in his 20s, Mr. Gibran spent time in Provincetown, where he opened a boutique with his first wife, Eleanor Mott Berg, who now lives in Sweden. By the early 1950s, he set aside painting for sculpture.
"My marriage was breaking up, due to me," he told the Globe in 1967. "I had too much energy. Painting made me restless, didn't demand enough of me. After the divorce, psychiatry made me understand I had to sculpt. Now, at night, after a day of sculpting, I am genuinely exhausted."
Honors soon followed: a George Widener Medal, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a fellowship and award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters, and the gold medal in an international exhibit in Trieste, Italy. (For examples of his work, go to kahlilgibran.org.)
And though sculpture earned him a place in the world of art, his name remained both blessing and curse. "He said that all his life," his wife said.
Mr. Gibran was a godson to the poet and philosopher who wrote "The Prophet," which has sold millions of copies in the United States alone, turning him by some accounts into the third best-selling poet ever, behind Shakespeare and Lao-tzu. In 1974, Mr. Gibran and his wife published "Kahlil Gibran, His Life and World," a biography they hoped would turn the myth back into a man.
"Kahlil and I worked for many years excavating and trying to analyze," Jean Gibran said. "He wanted to portray Gibran to the best of his ability, and we wrote the truth about him. I think it was the first very honest portrait of Gibran printed."
In a review, Globe critic Robert Taylor called it a "splendid biography" and "an extremely well-written book."
In addition to his wife and former wife, Mr. Gibran leaves a daughter, Nicole of Seattle; a son, Timothy of Stockholm; two sisters, Suzanne Huggin and Selma Vassall, both of San Diego; two grandsons; and a granddaughter.
A funeral Mass will be said at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday in Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon Church in Jamaica Plain. Burial will be private.
www.kahlilgibran.org
