White Park Bay Sculpture

Thought you might like to see one of the results of my labours at the sculpture workshop.

It's a large piece - because I invariably seem to make pieces which are incredibly large and unbelievably heavy, and this one is no exception.  It's based on field work that I did in Northern Ireland recently, on the Causeway Coast.

Here's my photo of White Park Bay, with it long sweep of the strand, looking out (on a clear day) towards Jura (right hand side).

Thecliffs sweeps round like two arms encompassing the bay.

So... here's my sculpture.

This is a pair of found armatures welded onto a circle of steel rods.  Because hey - I can weld!!!

Here is the circular armature - representing the curve of the bay and the cliffs, with the sweep of the sand and the sea.  I've welded it onto supports set into a slice of a 114 year old tree trunk (count those rings).

To the left on the ground, you can see a box containing the shards of clear and painted glass which I am going to use to make the sea.

A large sheet of plain green glass in added as a base, and the pieces of painted glass are then fixed into place on top of it using car body filler, which takes about 10 minutes to go off.  Chicken wire is fixed into place at the back to receive scrim and plaster.

The painted glass is fixed at an angle to represent the waves sweeping in.

Scrim and plaster have been moulded over the chickenwire, then painted with acrylic paint.  

The beaches in that area of Northern Ireland (such as White Rocks Beach) have very characteristic completely black and completely white rocks, hence the colours here.

I left the found armature exposed because I liked the patina, and the fact that they looked like arms.  I wanted to give the sense of the land embracing the sea.

Well, there it is.  Shards of broken glass and spikes of steel suspended at waist height.  Lethal!!