Earlier this week I met with the City of Oakland for the final inspection of our Makkeweks sculpture prior to installation. Installation is delayed until mid-2017 pending completion of Snow Park but the foundry completed the fabrication of the bronze castings and the sculpture’s interior, stainless steel armature in anticipation of temporarily storing the monster […]
Category Archives: makkeweks
Making Molds of Makkeweks
Garrett McLean makes molds of Makkeweks at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry I hadn’t realized how attached I had become to the Makkeweks until we took her apart and loaded her up on a flatbed for delivery to Berkeley. The studio seemed suddenly huge and empty, and the sculpture looked kind of sad and nervous on the […]
Makkeweks Progress Gallery
Sculpting the eyes of the monster has been the biggest challenge, so I saved that task for last. The eyes carry the expression and are the only crisp-edged, anatomically-specific feature of the sculpture, so they are where a viewer’s eyes would naturally be drawn. The monster’s eyes need to reinforce the gesture of the body […]
Makkeweks, Ifukube, and the Return of the Ray
I’ve flipped the creature and continue to rough out its topsides with my homemade saw Carving is like controlled erosion. A shape emerges in response to the real and imagined forces that dictate how and where material is added and removed. My primary job as I sculpt the Makkeweks sea monster is to manage these […]
Makkeweks Progress
The Makkeweks sea monster sculpture upside down, roughed out in stack-laminated cork No matter the depth of scientific knowledge there will always be monsters. You don’t have to look very hard to find them. Politics, industry and information technology are a few obvious breeding grounds. I’ve been thinking a lot about monsters as I begin […]
Mostri di Roma
Looking up the Tevere towards Islola Tiburina Water flows through Rome more visibly than time. It is an almost magical presence here, an animating force that makes the Eternal City feel alive in the present. Water streams constantly from hundreds of street corner taps, cold and delicious. Some still flows over aqueducts from the Colli […]
Research in Rome
Anna Falchi by the Trevi Fountain while shooting La Dolce Vita I’m very excited for my trip to Rome tomorrow. I’ve never been, but have a dreamlike sense of the city from cinema and art history. There is so much to see, it’s dazzling. My well-traveled friends say just walk, get lost, lose an evening […]