The Next Generation of You: George Nock

“I guess it had probably been eating away at me since I was a kid,” said Nock, who played for the New York Jets and Washington Redskins from 1969-72. “I dreamt about it, but other people dreamt about it, too. And then you wonder how you’re going to make a living because nobody had a formula for you to do so. You had to go it on your own and try to figure out how to make this work.

“The approach is individual because no one can tell you what you want out of it. But as you make your mind up and what you want to become, you have to do all the things that help you aspire to be that. Sometimes the biggest challenge is you.

“Once you make up your mind, you’ve got to go for the gusto and do it just like you worked at sports. Because if you want to be the best, you’ve got to get in there and practice, make sure you’re overcoming all the things that come up against you and make it work.” 

Nock has dedicated his life ‘s work to creating realistic figures in bronze.

“I was able to sculpt right off the bat and make it look like I wanted it to look like,” Nock said. “If I was able to do those things at seven years old, that sort of set the die as to what you can accomplish. If you can make it look like it’s supposed to look, you’re well on your way.

“Getting into the intricacies of bronze sculpture, I had to go to a foundry and be basically a walk-on for them to show me how to do it. Those are the little things that keep you on your toes. You’ve got to do it. As you go from one thing to the next, you grow. As you let your mind expand and say, ‘Can I do that? Why not? Other people have done it.’ I figured that if anybody can do it, I surely can do it.”

Nock, whose work can be seen on his website – www.georgenock.com – enjoys the challenge, the quest, and the procedure to produce unique pieces of art.

“Those are the things that make it most interesting,” Nock said. “And being that I never had any formal schooling in it, I’m learning through my own volition. How to do it this way and how to do it a better way.”

The end of the game, if you will, is when a project he has developed from an idea is appreciated and purchased.  

“It’s the ultimate that at least that which I’ve done, it was not in vain. You’ve gotten it to the point where others would want to have that as something as, I guess, an award to them because when you purchase art, it’s forever. The appreciation value is never going to go away,” Nock said.

“If the daily feeling you get from a piece of work that’s in your house, and you’ll go by that piece every day and some days you’ll appreciate it more than others, that’s what it’s about. If I have a piece that people can feel that way about, I’ve gotten to the point where that’s what I’ve accomplished.”