An inspiration

I just wanted to make a quick post and share some photos I took of an awesome sculpture I saw in California.Last semester I went on the LA Art trip Glen Blakely hosts here at Dixie State University, and I saw some great art. "Fantasy Bust" by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, was at very least in my top five favorite sculptures I saw that trip.

This is a terracotta sculpture, which immediately interests me since that is what I have experience sculpting in. My favorite sculptures from the art trip were terracotta because I actually have the hope of one day being as good as the artists who's work I saw. It's actually attainable. 

Anyway, the first thing that really surprised me was the amount of detail he put into this piece. A few years back I made a curly haired sculpture, which was quite a bit smaller than "Fantasy Bust," and I know how long I obsessed over each curl. 

(She was sculpted in a clay that fires white)

But the hair isn't the only impressive detail, it's incredible how delicate these flowers in her hair are.

This sculpture was made between 1865 and 1870. How in the world have all of those flowers stayed intact?! That doesn't actually have anything to do with the artist, but I know from my own experience that if it were me, I would have made the flowers then as I was working every other detail, they would have dried faster than everything else and gotten all cracked up. I inspected this sculpture from as close as I was allowed to get to it and I didn't see a single crack in the whole thing. That means that not only was this guy a great artist, he knew exactly how to manipulate the clay, it's drying time, and it's firing so he could come out with a pristine product. He had his craft down to a science.

Also, the hair looks like roots where it connects into her shoulders and chest and has that organic feel throughout. I thought of this sculpture because I'm working on a sculpture that should be really organic looking when I'm finished. 

Anyway, I thought it was super cool.

Until next time.

I made a Baby!

I mean uh, I sculpted a baby.

I don't really have a lot of experience with babies and children, so it's kind of crazy that I decided to include a baby in one of my pieces for my senior show. I know that if I mess that one thing up it will totally taint my whole showcase and all people will think about is the freaky baby. I felt like I had a good concept for a piece and it would just be better with a baby incorporated into it.

Now before you get too excited, I'm not going to post a picture of the baby I've been sculpting for the last four and a half hours or so. At least I won't post one yet. I need to go back and look at it with fresh eyes, then have my wife, Beth, look at it, then maybe some other women who know a thing or two about babies, and if they all approve, or I've made the needed improvements, THEN I'll post it on the internet for all six people who read my blog to see.

But so you don't need to feel let down, here are some pictures of weird looking babies from the days of Art's past to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.. or something.

Look! it's Benjamin Button!

I'm not entirely sure someone didn't photoshop muscles on the one on the right. 

And one modern day weird doll to finish it off.

Now see? Who would want to see that in an art show?

By the way, I think the baby I'm sculpting is turning out pretty good so far but of course it's not done yet.

See ya next time! Maybe I'll have something of substance to say.

It's Art!

I was looking for reference images of gnarly looking trees and roots and I came across this art piece by Giuseppe Licari.

It has very little to do with what I'm working on but I thought it was really cool. And walking through it like these people, 

would be a great experience.

A couple years ago I walked through a forest I had played in many times as a child after a storm knocked down a bunch of trees and it felt like I was stepping into something amazing and somewhat unreal. I think this view of a forest gives a similar feeling. Seeing something as familiar as a tree in a way you've never seen it before, that's art doing it's job.

I also wonder how the heck they got those trees attached to the ceiling securely enough to feel safe.

That's it for this time!


Images from:
designboom article
http://www.giuseppelicari.com

Flight

For a while now, I've been trying to figure out ways to make sculptures that look like they are defying gravity. I like the idea of flight, and the interpretations it can have in a piece of art such as freedom or escape, and I like the challenge of designing and sculpting such a piece.

For example, I was working on this study during Christmas time (hence the tree in the background). 

In real life, the hand would be holding up the cloth, but in a sculpture, the clay that looks like a cloth is holding up the clay that looks like a hand. I've just got to manipulate the cloth so it looks light and airy then it seems more like the hand is floating.

This other piece doesn't have quite as much clay holding it up and it was a bit more tricky to make it structurally sound, but the idea is still there.

I don't know yet how I want to finish this sculpture so it's still in it's orange terracotta state. 

I'm still playing with the idea and I've planned out a sculpture that will hopefully be a better illusion of flight than either of these two. Hopefully I can make it work.

Oh, and here are a couple links to artists who cast their art in bronze or other materials which are better suited to the idea. I'm content, though, for the time being, to make mine out of terracotta.

 Michael James Talbot

Tim Bruckner

That's all for now!

Figurative Busts

I found some cool sculptures and I wanted to share them.

I had a discussion a while back with one of my teachers in which we compared the merits of sculptural busts as portraiture or as figurative sculpture. I was using the term "Portrait busts" to mean any bust that is supposed to look like a model. He used the term differently and I realized that the kind of busts I'm interested in making were more correctly called figurative sculptures. He told me that not all figurative sculpture had to be full figures but that one could just be a part of the figure. I thought these busts illustrate that pretty well.

These works are all by Richard MacDonald who has the privilege of  using the Cirque du Soleil performers as his models. He makes some pretty awesome sculptures like this one on the left which is incredibly dynamic, but even the busts I'v been showing are figurative sculptures.

  They express emotion and have movement to them for the most part. Even this one, which isn't too dynamic is made a lot more interesting because of the inclusion of the ball on his shoulder.

 Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool.