Concentration Sculpture #1

The subject of my sculpture is a seahorse that is trapped inside of a bottle. This project was made by creating a form out of aluminum foil to act as a sort of base for the Sculpey to stick to so it had structure. Then I began to cover the foil in Sculpey, not paying to much attention to color since it would be painted later. As I added Sculpey, I pinched it in different places and used a variety of tools to get the ridges and texture. After I got the final shape, it was put in the oven to bake for about 20 minutes. Once it was out of the oven and cooled, I was able to paint it with acrylic paint, going off of a picture. Finally, I cut a plastic bottle from the recycling at the base, and put the seahorse inside, closing the bottle to finish it. I chose to create this specific sculpture because my concentration is sea life, and a seahorse was one of my first ideas in the thumbnail sketches. The elements and principles of design I used in this project are shape, color, texture, and balance. This sculpture is composed in a balanced manner.

The composition rules and techniques I used in this sculpture are formal balance since the sculpture can stand on its own and the sculpture has a central orientation, and framing since the plastic bottle kind of frames the seahorse in a way. My project evolved because originally I was just going to have the seahorse's tail wrapping around a piece of drift wood, but I never got around to finding a piece. So as the time to finish the project was winding down I decided to put the seahorse in a bottle instead.

The meaning behind this artwork is that this seahorse got trapped inside of this plastic bottle that was floating around in the ocean, and is unable to get back out. This project relates to my life because I enjoy the ocean and all of the sea life in it, which is captured in this sculpture. If my artwork could be stronger, I think that I would cut a hole through the bottle so that I could pass a piece of drift wood through it and have the seahorse attached to the drift wood by its tail.