About the Project: The goal of this project was to create a non-objective, free-standing sculpture comprised of clay and soap, utilizing both subtractive and additive sculptural tools and methods. We had to become comfortable working abstractly and needed to keep in mind contrasts—both the physical contrasts of the materials and the open-ended contrasts of the inside/outside theme. While we worked with the bar of soap, we were encouraged to break free from its geometrical shape to create an organic, asymmetrical form that could be viewed in the round. Upon completing our sculptures, we took photographs that played with scale and highlighted the form and texture of our works.
Medium: Soap, air-dry clay.
Size: Soap: 3 cm x 51/2 cm x 81/2 cm. Clay: 12 cm x 91/2 cm x 91/2 cm.
Process: I began with the soap, spinning it as I carved it, examining every incision I made from multiple angles. I really wanted there to be a continuous flow from one side of the sculpture to the next, looping in and around the sculpture’s focal point: an asymmetrical hole roughly in its middle. Frequently, I would hold the soap up to my lamp to see how the depth of each channel would vary the level of light that shone through it. Once I was thoroughly satisfied with my soap sculpture, feeling I had freed it from its original bar form and given it plenty of visual intrigue, I moved on to the clay. Originally, I thought I would have the clay thread through some of the soap sculpture’s channels, but I decided I didn’t want to cover up my work, and so the clay became a separate structure. I used a little bit of wire inside the clay as an armature to support its upward spiral and tried to carve lines into it that accentuated its curving path. Regarding the inside/outside theme, while I was contemplating what to do with the clay, one of my classmates, Nico, brought up the idea of thorns. That got me thinking along the lines of “soft inside vs hard/defensive outside” and so I made my clay sculpture rougher and sharper than the soap sculpture. I also approached the inside/outside theme from the angle of “inner vs outer world,” with the soap sculpture having a lighter, more ethereal feeling than the heavy physicality of the clay around it.
