Thursday, November 19, 2009

Michael Vick - Player of the Year






This is a Trophe sculpture, a cause for animals, that is based on the American football quarter back for the Philidelphia Eagles, in the National Football League, Michael Vick, who was recently arrested for participating in illegal dog fighting tournaments. This sculpture portrays the results of his actions. I modeled this entire piece from clay. I first started off by modeling all 4 limbs, the head and the body separetely. Once this was done, i cut all the parts in half to hollow them out, and joined them back together. I then joined the parts of the dog together and left it to get leather hard to carve the details of the dogs fur, the teeth, the cuts and stitches as well as Michael Vick's jersey and the shoulder pads. I then colored the fur of the dog with oxides, the jersey with a red under-glaze and the "blood" around the mouth with a cherry red under-glaze. I then hand coiled the podium on which the dog sits, Luted the dog to the podium and bisque fired the piece. The "block of wood" on which the dog on the podium sits, was slab-built into a cube of clay, which is hollow as well. The inside of this hollow block has 2 slabs of clay, which i joined in the form of a 90˚ angle cross and joined the edges of it to the inside walls, for support, to prevent distortion in the firing. I then left the block to dry past the leather hard stage and carved the detail of the wood onto the surface. After bisque firing, i rubbed Manganese dioxide and red iron oxide onto the surface to create the appearance of wood and fired it to 1060˚C to harden the oxides to the surface. The gold plate on the block of wood was measured and cut from a leather hard slab of clay. On either side of this plate are carved nails to indicate that they are holding the plate to the wood. I then carved out the writing, which says, "Michael Vick - Player of the year." Once his was done, i bisqued and glaze fired it to 1120˚C. I then applied a gold lustre to the surface and fired it to 750˚C. Gold also resembles first place. In Michael Vick's case, he has achieved a gold trophe for the abuse of animals, which is quite ironic. This sculpture is not to show that he is a victum, but the number one abuser of animals.

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