Hands Sculpture

The assignment for this project was to create a sculpture addressing a social or political issue and incorporating hands. This piece is composed of too cupped hands holding water which is dripping over rocks in a stream.

To create this piece I first made a plaster cast of my cupped hands. I did this by placing my hands in alginate, allowing it to dry, and then filling the empty hand-shaped space with plaster. When the plaster had dried I broke and peeled away the alginate to reveal the cast. I then painted the hands a skin tone and painted the fingernails a slightly lighter tone to make everything look realistic. Next I found blue bits of cloth to glue onto wood for the base of the piece and glued rocks on top of the cloth to make a sort of stream with pebbles and rocks. At this point I made what appears to be water falling into the stream by stacking blobs of hot glue. I painted this and the area around it black to give the appearance of oil spilling into the stream. I glued the ends of the wrists of the hands to a piece of wood that I had painted black and I screwed the black piece of wood to the base so that the hands are cupped over the stream. Finally, I mixed and poured resin into the cupped hands which dried to create artificial water in the hands. I think that texture is really important to this piece, and is seen in the hands, the rocks, and the "water" especially. I also like the movement in this piece and the fact that it appears to be frozen in time. This project evolved in that originally I considered using a pump to make a circulating fountain with the hands but this was unrealistic and would have required much more planning and construction. I was also going to incorporate a pipe that would be pouring water into the hands. I decided not to do this because I thought it would take away from the message and crowd other elements of the sculpture.

I made this sculpture to represent humans polluting water and pollution in general. The human hands are cupping water from the stream but as the water trickles through the hands it becomes oil which pollutes the stream. This project and message relate to my life because I care about the environment and believe that this is an important message for people to see. I think this piece could be stronger it the sides of the wood base were better covered with cloth. The most challenging part of this project was thinking of my design; the assignment was very broad and I wasn't initially sure what issue I could best represent using hands. I am most proud of my depiction of the oil spreading in the water which I think looks realistic. This piece illustrates my strength as an artist in my ability to express a clear message through my art. It shows weakness in lack of attention to detail around the edges of the base.