George- My 1st attempt at figurative sculpture

32"x24"x18"

cone 04 multiple firings

2010

Tackling the human figure, especially the face, seemed like a guareented fail. I thought of it as this really hard thing that I would only be able to do after years of practice. Then I had an assignment that required me to take a historical form and recreate it in a conemtorary context and I thought of George. My background in archeology had led me to reasearch on Tang Dynasty ceramics. It is a time period I am very familiar with including their vocabulary of form. During this period, tomb guardians were common and consisted of two main types, the warrior and the disfigured, grotesque "demon". Both were used to ward off evil spirits and their specific details were reflective of the cultures values and ethnic clashes.

I choose George Bush not only because he was/is such a polarizing figure but also, much like the originall tomb guardians of the time, represented comentary on how he embodied an ideology that was distrusted and how stupidity can truely be scary.