Sculpture

Name Fissured Mushroom
Material Mottled Marble with Quartz Veins
Block River Pebble
Origin Yatagan, Turkey
Entity Inception Date 2008 November

16 Fissured Mushroom

The outer appearance of this pebble was unusual compared to a normal marble pebble. The surface was heavily fissured and it was for this feature that I chose it for this sculpture. Cutting off the bottom of the pebble to form a base proved to be quite difficult because of its unusual hardness.

The composition of the pebble turned out to me a mixture of differing texture marbles bonded by streaks of a grey stone unusual in itself because it created sparks from the carborundum grinding wheel. Some quartz veins also made working the piece and the final sanding difficult, the quartz streaks are therefore slightly raised above the softer surrounding marble. The fissures in the natural surface of the pebble were formed by the softer marbles eroding faster than the harder material.

OK, I know the final piece looks like something from 'Noddy Goes To Toyland', but what the heck, you can't get it 'artsy' all the time. What evolves is what evolves, I don't have any say in the matter.

August 2009 - Fissured Mushroom Revisited

I have never been entirely happy with this piece, so I've re-worked it, enlarging the recesses to emphasise the ridges. The final stage was to immerse the whole piece in a bath of dilute hydrochloric acid, the idea being to dissolve the surface marble. Because this pebble is streaked with quartz veins these are unaffected by the acid, they therefore now stand out in relief.

The 'shiny' appearance is not any kind of varnish it is the natural finish after removal from the acid bath.

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