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In 2020 I started this sculptural series, with no intention of it really being a series in the long run, originally this was a college sculpture project I completed at SAIC, (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) but as many know it can be quite difficult to keep your work in college, especially if it’s anything three dimensional. These things can be heavy, difficult to carry, delicate, or just too big to keep in your apartment or student housing. In my case, I had used a podium provided by the school that I was not able to take home with me, or even truly carry. With this I decided to detach the figure from the podium, so I could glue it to a wooden canvas, and apply epoxy resin on top, to seal it and add shine. This, in fact, ended up being something that truly had an effect on the final piece. 

 

After moving from Chicago, I drove from the Midwest, to New York, to the West coast in the summer. I chose to take the southern route through the country, (less corn fields more fun) not knowing that in a town called Needles, California the a/c in my car would blow out and die, leaving me and my sculpture to melt in 115 degree heat. This, in fact, was not a massive disaster as it truly added more texture to the piece. The epoxy peeled, the wax melted more in some spots, revealing the red of the paint underneath. It definitely wasn’t exactly what I had planned, I did enjoy how the sculpture looked originally, but sometimes as an artist, things change despite the plan. 

 

With this in mind I decided to create another variation of the piece, without the wax this time, while still attempting to create the feeling of dripping or melting. In this attempt I used the same exact mannequin head, as not to change the face shape, a large circular cardboard tube, a smaller inner tube to support a cardboard circle cutout in the middle which held the head, as well as acrylic pour paints. I originally thought about using another podium, but something inside me chose not to as it would again run into the issue of being too heavy to transport often. I also decided against using the resin, as over time resin becomes yellow, and I truly didn’t want it to peel off of the form again as it had in the first version of the piece although it had added an interesting texture. 

 

As an artist it’s always reaffirming to revisit old subject matter, to think about how you could re-work or recreate something, maybe not exactly as it was the first time, but different and new in interesting ways. I believe every artist should at some point in their time of making things, look backwards at the items they’d spent so much time and effort on in the past and ruminate on them. It truly can be a very cathartic experience. 

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