Sculpture Elective.

Revisited sugar sculpture over the weekend.   My task was scale, go bigger.   This I did using styrofoam or aerobord as a base for an underlying structure.  I worked with what I had gluing blocks together to give some height.   Its definitely bigger, measuring above my waist, but considering I'm just 4'11'' that's still not big enough.   I had been looking at the small piece I had made earlier and wondered how I might push it on, take it further.   Thinking how they looked like nature and how  I had liked the strands that covered the structure, I decided on the idea of maybe encasing the next one with thread or something like that.   Over the weekend the countryside was full of fog and I spotted some cobwebs that were emphasised more because of it.   These would never be seen except for the fog and with the light on them, they seemed to have a similar texture and glisten to that of the sugar syrup when it dried.   I wanted to try to convey this with the sugar structure, another experiment.  This is what happened.

From nature.

From the kitchen.

                                          

 Of course getting this in to the car to transport it to Limerick was some fun, even though its not huge it wouldn't fit in one piece, so nothing for it but to take it apart.   When I got down I put it back together.    After looking at it again it became apparent that it was like two pieces of work with all the interesting bits going on at the top.  I decided to put the heat gun on some areas to make it dissolve further, maybe this might make it more interesting to look at especially around the bottom.  I think it worked to some extent, but as its just an experiment and there is no real outcome expected the surprise element of what happens is exciting.  You can judge for yourself.

Adding heat.

After I had finished this I thought about adding colour with ink but decided against it.   The reason for not doing so was that one of the most thrilling and exciting things about this experiment was its unpredictable results.   With each batch of sugar paste the colour varied maybe only slightly but on balance I felt that this was colour enough.   I also like the whole translucent nature of the experiment so I decided its own natural hues were better.  Who knows, I may revisit it again and change this last stage.