Commission

The Portrait & Human Figure

I wanted to study classic sculpture in the Czech Republic because these schools covet their discipline in the study of the human figure. In the past I had always wanted to understand this process as a craft as well as artistic form and see within its basic differences. I wanted to learn from the old schools to better my contemporary abstract and free-form works that I had been working with in the States. As a student, my main goal was to better blend these contradicting concepts to help further my own studies in Europe. Ironically, I have received many more commissions in which the client wants only the classic influence.

Can you make it look like Grandma?
The human figure is possibly the most challenging task for a sculptor. Most figure commissions come as a memorial, thus, all you have to work with are a few photographs. It is a challenging puzzle to take a two-dimensional representation and transform it into a three-dimensional object, one to which the client often has an emotional attachment to. We all want to recognize the person, even if everyone’s perception of the person is different. The important key is not to go by the artist’s perception alone. The client must decide, while in the clay stage of modeling, whether or not the clay model represents the likeness of the subject before casting in a permanent material or carving into stone.