Mortality

Through process , changing family unit, time and  development , id thought about life in general , what happens to all I that I treasure when I’m gone ??? what happens to what we all own when we are gone??, our seas are already suffocating from all the plastic waste that we are all guilty of dumping and disregarding, what will be left for my grandson , his children , children’s children in the future? does anyone consider it or is that down to the overthinking creative people?

Id reflected on this question a lot over the months after the surprising arrival of my gorgeous amazing grandson, it brought me back to my earlier reflections and thoughts while I was going through my teenage years , I cared about this so much , motherhood had taken me to a very different place , were I had put all my energy into providing a childhood I had so much wanted, I concentrated in giving my children everything I possible could , and I’m guilty for concentrating on the materialistic demands as well as the quality time needed, yes id introduced them to their surroundings, introduced them to nature, id forgotten to show them how important it was to care for that as well, we now have a generation brought up in a disposable world , and the next generation and the generation after that will suffer from it dearly unless we try and rectify the damage that has been done .

Id thought about this long and hard , I wanted to make a strong statement , shock sometimes can have a huge impact , people have seen images like the one above, but I think most of the time we don’t open our eyes to it, you only have to drive down the A9 and look, the amount of rubbish the lines the length of the road shocks me every time!

so I had decided I wanted to develop a sculpture idea id previously worked on, the hollow man , I wanted to make a human life size sculpture, representing , the passage of time , age and the hollowness, in death we are nothing, we are gone and we leave behind! what we leave behind effects the future generation, what we keep and treasure has no real value for the next generation.

The sculpture began to develop into its own , it was a slow process , with lots of thought process and problem solving along the way , my medium with this sculpture , although experimental worked with chicken wire as a frame with sheep fleece as skin , id experimented with different sheep fleece for texture, id wanted it to be dark , shocking to get the best impact possible with the materials.

The hands and feet were important for this sculpture , id worked hard trying to get as much detail as the material would allow me , it wasn’t easy.

we can live without our hands and feet , but those lucky enough to hold onto then till the end know that they are probably the hardest parts of our body , our hands are exposed to so much that we take for granted, mine have a million stories to tell , mine held my first born in his first minutes of life , they know what it feels like to feel new life , an experience that I never knew could over whelm me , my feet, my feet have walked thousands of miles , they have carried me forward, pushed me sometimes to my limit and then some, but we take this so much for granted, so the importance to get detail was so important.

 

Putting the sculpture together was a new challenge for me , adapting to the length of time I needed gave me the strength to allow it to develop with the patience needed to complete what I intended to achieve. As it developed , id thought about incorporating a Zimmer frame with the sculpture to add to the impact of what I hoped to say, the sculpture wouldn’t stand as I had hoped so seating it in a yarn bombed chair was another option to go with, this made me think about the message I wanted to say , and I then thought about a suitcase , we all have baggage we carry , what happens to it when we are gone??

Id played around experimentally with materials and consciously used plastic bottles with yarn and rope discarded on the beach giving it a voice.

I want this conceptual art piece to speak out and impact the viewer to stop and think.