Mixed media sculptures (2)...

The second in this series of sculptures depicts an oriental styled shrine. I decided to continue using curved wood elements and stone with this piece. The top and bottom wood elements are fairly symmetric and I added small, narrow lengths of blackwood to the bottom of the sculpture for stability. The stone is surrounded with vertical ebony pieces creating the structure around the stone. This particular sculpture began as a small sketch and some wood pieces I had on hand in my studio. The conceptual drawing of this sculpture was a little difficult to envision in three dimensions since I was not sure if the scale of the curved elements would be overwhelming to the central stone element. I think I got it right though, the curved elements depict the roof and base of the shrine while accentuating the central stone and ebony section.

I deliberated over striking the correct balance of colour in this sculpture. I feel confident the lighter maple contrasts well with the stone, blackwood and ebony as well the light coloured maple accentuates the colorful central stone section. The darker vertical ebony accent elements separate the the upper and lower sections of the scaled down structure. This will be the fourth sculpture where I combine wood and stone and I am enjoying the process as well as the resulting work.

Mixed media sculptures (1)...

An opportunity came up recently to create two sculptural pieces for an exhibition. I decided to continue with the mixed media approach once again, incorporating wood and stone in this piece. I had free reign to create anything I wished without the constraint of following a theme. I decided to work with wood I had on hand as I find it too easy to overlook wood I have stockpiled and instead go out to purchase more, sometimes I feel like a chipmunk or a squirrel, continually stockpiling wood. A good habit to have, it's just that the earlier acquisitions seem to get forgotten in light of the new acquisitions. I decided to have curves in these sculptures to accentuate the beauty of the woods I have selected. The woods are figured big leaf maple, blackwood and ebony. The stone pieces constitute the mixed media part of the sculptures.

I also decided to depart from any of my previous sculptural work and create work which is a little more exciting and focused. I made some preliminary sketches and began to get excited about creating the sculptures as I fine tuned the sketches. The big leaf maple is very pleasant to work with and contrasts well with the dark blackwood and ebony. The sketches portray the image of a shrine or at least in my mind I envision a shrine or a symbolic gathering place. I really like to see how well the stone integrates with the wood as they are both natural elements in nature, in this case they complement each other fairly well I would say. This is the frist of the two sculptures, the next post will have the other sculpture. Although I am not following an exhibition theme, I somehow managed to create a theme for these two sculptures...