This is the new sculpture called ‘Superchief’. It’s a partner piece to ‘El Capitan’, which I’ve already written about.
While they both originally came from the same piece of soapstone - and both started along the ‘organic’ theme that started with the early sculpture ‘Carnivora’ - this one diverged rapidly from that theme.
’Superchief’, in its early stages of development, immediately reminded me of Art Deco posters of early 20th century streamlined locomotives in the US (one of which was called the 'Super Chief' (and another was called ‘El Capitan’ :-) )).
So the sculpture developed in a direction which none of my previous sculptures had followed. In fact, as I was working on the two sculptures in parallel, this Art Deco element fed back into ‘El Capitan’ and it started to diverge from the original organic form.
The original sculpting, as noted in an earlier blog entry, was carried out using wood chisels, the surface was then refined using toothed stone chisels. The tool marks were then smoothed out by rasps and files, before the final wet finishing with wet and dry abrasive paper going from 120 grit up to 2500 grit. It was then given a protective coat of wax stone polish.
As previously noted, this is carved from the ‘coca-cola’ soapstone (so called by the stone merchant, not me), and unlike ‘El Capitan’ the cream flecks are spread more evenly through the stone.
Both ‘Superchief’ and ‘El Capitan’ are available for sale - please contact me if you’re interested.
‘Superchief’ hand carved soapstone, on a reclaimed wood base (originally part of a groyne / sea defence) 2015; W 21.5cm D 18.5cm H 16.5cm 4.35kg