Progress Photos
Taking progress photographs as a sculpture evolves is not as easy as it sounds, once engrossed in the revelation process it is not easy to stop, take off dust mask, gloves and hat and take pictures. Getting someone else to do it would be equally difficult and impractical, I just spend the odd day and random spare hours sculpting, I don't work to any program. The easiest way is to take pictures at natural breaks [for whatever reason]. This means that the amount of time between stages can be somewhat erratic, nevertheless the outcome at least gives some perspective to the discovery process.

This is the first of my sculptures that has a progress photo record.

Coincidence
Interestingly, on the day that I had just completed wrapping a wire frame model of 'Love Snakes' with black electrical insulating tape I was walking along the road in Comlekci village only to discover that a 1.5 meter black snake was escorting me rustling through the grass at the side of the road. Now snakes in the village itself are not so common so it was quite a coincidence that I should see a black snake in our village within minutes of having completed a wire frame model of black snakes. The snake was 'dealt with' by a local farmer and was disposed of before the thought occurred to me that it would have been appropriate to have used the real snakes fangs in the sculpture.

Development
My initial idea was to have the snakes entwined in battle, it was only during the process of removing the unwanted marble that my thoughts evolved towards a dominant, slightly mesmerized, aloof snake and its smaller, more aggressive love mate. I had for some time been toying with the idea of sculpting intertwined spirals.

The Love Snakes are now released from the marble pebble that had imprisoned them for so many hundreds of thousands of years.

I am particularly fond of this piece, each viewing angle providing a different aspect of the encounter between the snakes and the overall balance of the whole piece.

AS can be seen from the photographs, the whole sculpture including the base, is formed from a single piece of marble.

Progress Pictures

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Completed Sculpture

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Also

Love Snakes was featured in the 2009 Bodrum Art Group calendar:

Love Snakes and Horned Goat

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