Erik Ebeling Art » Blog » New Sculpture Completed, Rejoice

New Sculpture Completed, Rejoice

Erik May 14, 2009 — 50 comments

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The large scale gypsum sculpture, Dive is finally complete. It’s 42” tall — the figure itself being 32” of those inches, and the base being the other 10”. Like most projects, this ended up taking longer than I had intended, but I think it turned out pretty well. It definitely commands attention when it’s in the middle of a room, and it has this sort of strange blueish glow under natural light, which I like. I know these pictures are a little awkward and disjointed, but I’ve yet to produce an effective lighting setup for this dude. Anyway, you get the idea for now, I will post better pictures once I figure it out.

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Sculptures especially, and obviously, are greatly affected by their visual interaction with the environment around them. Much like paintings (which I discussed here ), they have a totally different effect in different areas; they definitely benefit from the perfect placement, and definitely lose something in the wrong placement. I mainly worked on this sculpture in my garage (pictures here and here ). I was focused on the form and the surface, almost always close to it, working all areas to an equal degree of finish so that the whole thing evolved at the same rate; through the rough and incoherent first stages to the final tedious sanding. Occasionally during the process, especially toward the end, I would take it to my living room, set it on the table where it is the visual centerpiece of the whole environment, and stand back to have a look. To take a ganders, if you will. Out of the garage and in a clean and open environment, the overall effect of the piece is completely different, enough so that it directed me toward a different (and hopefully more successful) finished piece than I would or could have come to had I kept it locked in the garage the entire time.

Brief Anecdote: Note that a little more than halfway through the process, this sculpture was dropped, crashing into a table and onto the concrete floor from a height of about 5 feet. I had it on a sculpting stand I had made, which had a top that could swivel, so you could turn the sculpture without moving the stand. I was showing a few friends the work in progress, turning it theatrically for all angles to be seen, while, unknown to me at the time, the interlocking iron pipes that allowed the spinning had gotten jammed together, preventing spinning, and instead unscrewing the wooden platform on which the sculpture stood. Bam. Platform comes free of the stand, sculpture crashes away from me (of course, so I can’t catch it), onlookers shocked and terrified, artist exasperated (and only mildly surprised). It was a mess, and to be honest, quite embarrassing. But you would never know it looking at the final piece. Hooray!! Ugh.

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50 comments so far — Post a comment

Nick Vedros May 18, 2009

Love it Eric..Great concept too.

Nick

Sean May 18, 2009

Wow that is amazing! How long have you been working on that? Where have I been?

Susan Speck May 19, 2009

WOW! this sculpture is awesome! You should have a gallery.
I have a contact where I show occasionally. Try the Strecker-Nelson in Manhattan, Kansas.
I am going to send images in teh next couple of weeks to them so I can get back into showing there.

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