I am delighted to be back at the sculpting bench doing new pieces. Having moved from Santa Barbara and now settled into Charleston, South Carolina, I have finally been able to set up shop again. In some cases I am reworking previous pieces. The "Birds in Flight" was inspired by the wild bird refuge in the lake adjacent to our home. The base of the sculpture is made from an old apple tart pan. The leaves are an early foray into foldforming and the piece was to be topped with a cluster on mineral spheres. I clipped off the top and made it into a small sculpted tree form. The birds on from an old Dominick Laruccia design used on small fountains.
Currently I am working on a piece inspired by the Cycladic art of ancient Greece. I am fascinated by the simple elegance and craftsmanship that the exhibit.
From Wikipedia: "The ancient Cycladic culture flourished in the islands of the Aegean Sea from c. 3300 to 1100 BCE.[2] Along with the Minoan civilization and Mycenaean Greece, the Cycladic people are counted among the three major Aegean cultures. Cycladic art therefore comprises one of the three main branches of Aegean art.
The best known type of artwork that has survived is the marble figurine, most commonly a single full-length female figure with arms folded across the front. The type is known to archaeologists as a "FAF" for "folded-arm figure(ine)". Apart from a sharply-defined nose, the faces are a smooth blank, although there is evidence on some that they were originally painted. Considerable numbers of these are known, though unfortunately most were removed illicitly from their unrecorded archaeological context, which seems usually to be a burial."
Michael
Birds in Flight
Bonsai 2021
