This is my final product! The bird-man had slumped and lost a few of his scales, and so I helped give him more of a spine and replaced/added some of the scales that had been lost. I then placed him within my arena of soil, and artfully arranged several of the rocks, gumballs, and even the stripped-down pinecones that I had used to make the coat around the figure. I spent many hours creating this piece and I am glad that I am finally finished, although I am equally grateful that I was able to create my vision.
Madoc Kimball Adam Miscellaneous outdoor materials In this sculpture, I have constructed a scene, as opposed to something less figurative and more abstract. The central figure, Adam, is surrounded with a variety of debris and strange objects, a majority of which he has used to construct his coat of scales and stones. Lacking a true face, a bird skull peers out from Adam’s hood, decaying leaves splaying out from the hem of his tattered robe. A sense of mystery pervades the scene, alongside a host of questions, each wondering as to how Adam found himself amidst the detritus of his makings, although perhaps it is not all his fault as well. I drew inspiration from this piece from a series of pencil sketches I found online detailing stooped, masked figures wrapped in robes like shamans of old. I found this aesthetic interesting and appealing because of the inherent mystery the drawings gave out - because you could neither see the beings beneath, it left you wondering who they were/are and what their purpose was/is. The sort of art where it is both an interesting experience to look at but the meaning is largely up to interpretation or conjecture is one that I enjoy greatly and try to incorporate into my so-far small body of work. Adam is an enigma, in both who or what he is and also what he seeks to accomplish. Biblical references can be drawn of course, correlating the figure to the Christian creation myth and the fall of man at the hands of Adam and Eve, and such inferences would not be entirely untrue when attempting to understand the purpose and backstory of the figure, but I feel that Adam is much more complex than that alone. Adam is an enigma, but one with a history, a purpose, and memories, that all depend on the history, purpose, and memories of he or she who views him, and it is those experiences that help shape what one thinks of the sculpture. Is it just a guy made of pinecones standing in the dirt? On some level, yes. Is he a wanderer lost to the passages of an endless journey? Maybe. Who Adam is and how he found himself in the state that he does can depend almost solely on the perceptions of the viewer, and I as creator take great pride in knowing that I have helped to influence that.
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This is the work I have gotten done on my main figure, the necromancer/shaman that is raising the dead. This Saturday I went out to Three Lakes park and collected as many sticks, twigs, pinecones, stones, and leaves as I could fit into the bags I brought along with me. I also stopped by a shop Hanna reccomended me, Rest in Pieces in downtown Richmond, which is a gothica/taxidermy store where I bought a chicken skull for only $10!
I began some preliminary work on my arena, filling it with dirt, and started to try and add scenery, but I was not successful, and so I started to work on my main figure. Thankfully, we have a glue gun at my house and I used it to hot glue several pinecones and a tall stick together, two of the pinecones attached to the bottom of the stick to form a rudimentary ribcage and shoulders and three at the bottom for the lower body. I then cut up an old black T-shirt of mine, and after several failed starts wrapped it around the body in a way that looks like a hooded robe. I attached the head to the hood and then glued a line of rocks down the front of the robe, and red leaves to the hems to form a sort of tasselled train. I thought I was done before I began to look at the row of pinecones splayed out before me, and began peeling off the scales of the pinecone and glueing them to the back of the robe like some bizarre coat. And then I was done! Aside from peeling off of the strings of hardened glue, that is. |
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