ART

In the middle of my BFA, I submitted this sculpture for the annual Outdoor Sculpture Project competition. I wanted to address the inherent social tensions of the courtyard, so I used the ‘trust game’ where you fall backwards into the arms of a friend. I had originally considered using two figures where one falls into the other’s arms, but placing the falling figure on the university building roof and catching figure on the ground in the courtyard. For building code reasons, this could not be done, but I think this restriction took the sculpture in a better direction.

In the absence of a catching figure, the viewer is placed in the position of the trusted friend. I dressed the figure in my own clothing, but I do not consider it a self-portrait. Using my own clothes seemed like the only appropriate choice, since fashion is an arbitrary personal choice. It also has a brown haired wig and a hat to help hold it down, where as I have blond hair and rarely wore hats. Since it had to last a year outdoors, I sprayed the clothing with so much weather protection that it set into position. The tree he is standing on was taken from the yard of one of my professors. I dug a 4 foot hole in the courtyard and set the tree into cement.

A common response I got at the time was how the sculpture made people look up, interrupting the habit of looking at the ground while they walked, and making them realize just how much they look at the ground. This was of coarse before the age of smartphones where people now tend to look down at their phones while walking.

The figure is a mannequin I acquired from the Hudson Bay Company store in Montreal. On a whim, I went to the store and asked if they had any old mannequins to donate or sell. I was lead into a maze-like backroom with hundreds of mannequins in different states of repair. They let me take two for $20, a child and adult mannequin. I cut up the child mannequin, reassembled it around a welded steel rod support, and used fibreglass to rejoin the limbs to the body.