Rick Clubb fine art painting and sculpture

Equine | Watercolor | Portraits | Musicians | Sculpture

Sculpture Found Objects and Carved Wood

I use the dimensional aspect of sculpture to focus on a theme. The space absent, removed by carving is often more important as a theme than what remains and is visible in wood.

In my sculpture a man’s hidden body is visually secondary as it is initially viewed as a large land bird, the African Hornbill. With closer inspection we see the man and that he is a hunter and that he has purposely hidden himself further with the disguise.

The creative evolution of “African Hunter, the Poacher”

Within the sculpture "African Hunter, the Poacher" a hunter hides in the outer feathered skin of a dead land bird, a bird species similar to a North American Turkey. The Native American people used the same hunting technique to hunt North American Buffalo cloaking themselves in a skinned hide. More than a century ago the people of the Great Horse culture lived in a balance with nature. Today some species need protection.

Going deep into the center of a large block of mahogany I start the idea of a man’s face looking downward and out through a narrow crevasse. Focusing on the outside of the block I drew the outline of a land bird’s head looking outward directly on top of the human’s head. Carving chisels worked the top portion down to the narrow pipe like silhouette of a bird’s angled neck, head, and beak. I removed all of the wood down to where the land bird’s shoulders start to appear and I continued to remove wood on the block into a conical shape. The man’s head remained in the middle underneath the bird head deep between the bird’s winged shoulders.

At this stage I began to block-up and assemble found wood all around the sculpture enlarging the piece two fold. Found wood slats roughly 2"x30"x5" were pegged on one edge, on the backside of the block. On the other side slats of wood mirrored the initial side blocking up both sides to reveal the appearance of wings. Between the wings I place a 4"x6"x 24" pedestal that lifted the entire block with pegged wings off the ground and secured everything on a platform disk.

Looking at the entire blocked-up sculpture I sketched the details and proportions of a crouching man under the wings along with a decapitated head of a large land bird. A carved Styrofoam human body is added with epoxy-resin as a place holder for the future mahogany body.

I am now at the second stage ready to carve and rough-out the entire sculpture. In this next step I unpin all the staves, pedestal, and Styrofoam body from the block into separate pieces. Using the sketch I am able to carve each piece in correct proportion as it is positioned in the sculpture. Each piece is carefully carved and fitted and ultimately pegged together again.

The third stage is where I will detail and finish the surface. Right before I unassembled the figure, adjustments are made to anatomically correct the "Hunting Poacher". I detail each of the wing feathered parts that are pegged to the main block frame, then carve the bird’s head; carve the man’s head, foot and body. I will choose to substitute the Styrofoam in the man’s figure and replace it with mahogany pegged together and situated the body over the lone foot everything is balanced on. This last stage of detailing requires the wood to be carved and sanded to a smooth finish. The dark stain gives the piece continuity that further reveals the detail.