Title: Lupine Sculpture 9

Date: 1999

Method: Plaster

Description: The hands will prove to be the most difficult to finish.

I kind of wish I'd kept the fingers together and made the left hand a fist resting on the knuckles. Anyway, I wrapped the wire armature fingers in scrim (an open-weave fabric) to give something for the plaster to adhere to. I made the plaster good and thick - without actually losing the definition of the fingers - so there was plenty of room for carving the final forms on the knuckles and claws.

Once again I have to leave this one. I'm making a move to Dublin for a year or two and in the mean time the house that has been it's home for the last five years is to be sold. I'm really not sure what's going to happen to it now - it's extremely heavy and not the kind of thing to be shipped around Europe. I'm sure customs would be very interesting in taking lump-hammer to it anyway.

There is a possibility that it will just have to be... disposed of.

[Update] Well, I thought this sculpture was gone for good when I arrived in Dublin last year without it. But two months later I came down to answer the door and there it was sitting in the lobby. I hadn't got around to pounding it into pieces before I left and it turns out my father just didn't have the heart to either, instead he made one last van trip across the Irish Channel (he's moving back to Ireland himself) to get it to me. The thing only weighs about 55kg but its not exactly the kind of thing you can heft over your shoulder, it's just the wrong shape for one person to carry. In the end it took four people to haul it up the four narrow flights of stairs to the apartment.

The apartment is a duplex in an old Georgian terrace with a small kitchen, bathroom, living room and a work/bedroom. The latter is the only room with any space left in it so that's where it is, crouched behind me as I write this, facing into the corner - not very dignified but preferable to being smashed into bits I'm sure.

Seeing as he's going to be around for a while longer I should probably come up with a title...

[Update] 2003: The sculpture (still unnamed) has been moved to a small town in Wexford where he's distressing the locals.

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