Sculpture and Interpretation Jesus of Nazereth

Photo credit  Art  Di Lella                    Sculpture copyright  Greg Furmanczyk

Over the past several weeks, I've been moulding two versions of the Crucified Christ. The two sculptors, Peter Joyce and Greg Furmanczyk are almost at polar opposites in their interpretation of this very well known subject. What I mean is that not only the execution(pardon the pun) is different but the intent as well.

Photo Credit  Art  Di Lella            Sculpture copyright  Peter Joyce

To begin with, back in the spring, I was commissioned by the artist Peter Joyce to construct a mould over his Crucified Christ clay model. I was struck by it's almost complete departure from traditional iconography.

Photo  credit  Art  Di Lella                      Sculpture copyright  Peter  Joyce

 The Christ figure has no hair,no beard,no crown of thorns,no loin cloth, his eyes are open and He is alive. Plus His musculature and proportions are consistent with a male bodybuilder. This is a radical departure from the tradtional imagery but as the artist explained it to me it was a work of personal devotion that's to emphasize the living and powerful Christ.
The sculpture is half natural size and will be cast in bronze by the Crucible Foundry.

Photo credit  Art  Di Lella                             Sculpture copyright  Greg  Furmanczyk    

Photo credit  Art  Di Lella                       Sculpture copyright   Greg  Furmanczyk

Photo credit  Art  Di Lella                               Sculpture copyright  Greg  Furmanczyk

The second work shown is by the artist Greg Furmanczyk.
 I also started moulding this sculpture in the spring as well. This is a commissioned work for a Catholic Church in western Canada. This version of Christ although it appears as a traditional corpus, it too has deviated from some of the conventions as well.  First of all you'll notice the face has a serene expression and not one of a suffering Christ or a dead one. Secondly, like Peter's version this Christ also lacks a crown of thorns. Finally, the treatment of the body is classical in inspiration but it's modeled in a more contemporary manner with the musculature and proportions that are more natural and not idealized.
The sculpture shown is cast in reinforced gypsum cement and is natural in size.

In sum,both these projects are a little unusual for me because it's extremely rare to find any contemporary artist let alone two,sculpting sacred images and casting them at the same time. I found it fascinating how different their conceptions were of the same subject and wondered how many serious artists attempt this type of religious imagery nowadays?

Anyway, I will be back later in the week. Take care.

Skin Texture and Hyper Realism in Black and White Part 2

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Hello, I hope everyone is having a good week so far.
I've been spending most of my time working on a life sized gypsum cement cast of  the "Crucified Christ" by the artist Greg Furmanczyk. In my next post, I'll be publishing pictures of the finished sculpture.
In the meantime, today's post is a followup to a post that was published on June 12th. In that post, I was presenting black and white images of my clay models to show off the skin texture better. I thought this time the finished silicone casts would get the same black and white treatment as well.
Although the skin texture is muted by the translucency of the silicone,the black and white images of the busts themselves seemed to give the sculptures, a sense of heightened reality compared with colour. I've always been impressed with black and white photographs or film because of it's dramatic effect and sense of distance. What do you think?

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

 I'll be back soon, take care have a great weekend.

Studio Updates

Photo credit  Barbara  Di Lella              Sculpture copyright  Alan  Sakhavarz

This has been an extremely active week for me. It started with completing a couple of concrete sculpture moulds for the artist Matthew Del Degan(not shown) followed by two other moulding and casting projects also sculptures by the artists Alan Sakhavarz and Greg Furmanczyk. These last two projects are still  in process but will be completed shortly.

The image above is a detail shot of a sculpture by the artist Alan Sakhavarz

Photo credit  Barbara  Di Lella           Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

You'll probably have trouble guessing what this is all about. What you are looking at is the back portion of a mould and partial cast of "The Crucified Christ" by the artist Greg Furmanczyk. When this project is complete, I will be doing a post on this sculpture combined with another artist's work who also explored this subject as well. Coming soon.

Photo credit  Barbara  Di Lella      Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

This is me sneaking in a few moments with Lake Turkana Boy. I'm applying texture to the surface. I'm hoping over next few weeks there will be more frequent posts on him plus painting my silicone bust of Hyper Realistic Reconstructed Sculpture#2(Young Woman).
Special thanks to Barbara for the images in this post.
I'll be back soon. Take care.

Skin Texture and Hyper Realism in Black and White

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Hello everyone.
Looking back at last week's post, I've decided to expand the modeling and texture post by showing other clay models that have been produced over the past year and a half but this time present them in black and white.

I believe this is a better approach to showing the texture more clearly.

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

You will notice that the skin texture with all of them is highly variable which makes sense  when dealing with individuals of different gender,age and species.
After the basic sculpting and contouring is complete then the textures are applied. The texture is done with modeling tools which are applied one texture layer at a time with different areas of transition. The whole process requires patience and lots of experimentation.
Every subject that I embark on is different,so having a standard or a "recipe" approach to skin texture would not work.
Anyway, I will be returning this week with some studio updates. Take care.I hope all of you have a great week.

Texture and Modeling, Hyper Realistic Figure Sculpture #1 Homo Erectus

 

I'm back again with new images of my ongoing figure sculpture. Lately,I've been focusing on the neck and shoulders and making further changes while applying different skin textures in various spots. It's a back and forth process for me and not linear. You'll notice that the neck is thicker which was necessary because of the rather wide back to the skull. Before I made this adjustment I had noticed that the back of the shoulders  seemed a bit off but the actual culprit was the neck. Often, I find that happens when spending too much time in one spot or not enough can throw the piece "out of whack".

At the same time,I've been putting texture on the face ,neck and shoulders. The textures being applied are for the moment just experiments. As I mentioned in previous postings, I'm trying to find a skin texture that is appropriate for this particular sculpture. In the above image,I left the photo in it's original size so that the visitor will have a better view of the texture which is on his right pectoral and parts of the face(partly shown).
Anyway, I plan on updating the blog later this week. I hope all my visitors a great and productive week.
Take care.

Hyper Realistic Reconstructed Sculpture #2 in Silicone has Arrived!

Yesterday, I finally got around to casting my bust of a young woman which is part of a series called (for the time being) "Hyper Realistic Reconstructed Sculpture". Actually, this the fourth cast in silicone for this group of works.

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

Image copyright  Art  Di Lella

This series of sculptures are based on clay reconstructions made over real human skulls. After the modelling is completed the models are then moulded and afterwards cast in silicone.The silicone has been coloured with pigment and flocking just like the others in this series although I've been adding more flocking to this particular cast because I want a little more variation in the base skin colour for this individual. The sculpture shown is unpainted and will need some repair to a few small casting blemishes before the painting can start. 

I will be publishing images of all stages for this sculpture with descriptions so stay tuned.
Have a great weekend. I'll back early next week. Cheers.