I have finally taken new photos of two of my large metal sculptures. Narcissus vertebrata is easily one of my favorite sculptures that I have made up to this point. It started as a self-portrait, as a thinker (you can decide how you want to relate the imagery to myself) but it turned into this interesting human-plant hybrid. Maybe this is how plants will evolve to fill our places on Earth. I spent a long time welding the spine together. Despite what most people think, the spine is made using a completely additive oxy/acetyl welding process and is not cast. It took me a long time to make it, I will not say how long because that is not impressive or interesting. This is also how I was using the plastic wrap originally. Plastic wrap came to me as a sculpting material from my father and my work in my parents gallery. At one point we made a switch from packing artwork with adhesive tape to plastic wrap for obvious reasons. While in a sculpture class I was making forms out of chicken wire and found myself in want of a skin, a surface. This is how my heat application of the plastic wrap began.
Echo vitis is another larger metal piece that has been sitting around my studio for quite some time. The face was my first delve into sheet metal shaping. It was all done cold with a few different kinds of hammers. This was an incredibly fun and frustrating process. I started with a pristine piece of sheet metal and just started going to town on it with a hammer. As the face, more of a mask, started to take shape, I was taken back to making charcoal drawings, defining form with light and shade rather than line. While also a method of relieving stress, this sculpture, like Narcissus, was a further investigation into the relationship between vestigial human features surviving in a plant based world of the future. This is also why I related the two sculptures by name. For some better looks at both of these sculptures you can visit this page.
UPDATE: I also installed Red Queen's Race on the collector's property. I snapped some photos and it really looks like a forest spirit to me. I want to make more large sculptures to go outside. I love how it interacts with the environment. To see another few photos of this on site installations you can scroll to the bottom of this page.
