Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Avert Your Eyes


In my last post I warned you that my mind was racing towards other sculptural possibilities of hand-made paper. The above picture shows work in progress in converting a portion of the cast of figure from plaster to paper. The sculpture that I have used as a form dates back to the mid 1990's and was my first attempt at a life-size figure. With the exception of the two images below, photographs of work in progress on the original have been lost on crashed computer hard-drives. Furthermore, I only retained the upper part of the plaster cast when I re-located my studio from England to the Caribbean.



It was an incident when work was in progress on the original that led me to title this post "Avert Your Eyes". My studio in the North of England had previously been a Church Assembly Hall and its dramatic features were listed with English Heritage. The listing protected the building from undesirable modification and church covenants on the sale of the building protected the building from undesirable usage. The covenants banned the sale of alcohol (but fortunately not the consumption) and lewd entertainment.  

My wife Denise modeled for the standing figure and while work was in progress a group of church elders asked if they might visit. On the day of their visit I draped the figure for fear that it might fall under the "lewd entertainment" category.

All went well until a lady, well into her eighties, began lifting the veil and asked, "What do we have here!" Before I could utter an explanation she had completely removed the covering. She then stood back and exclaimed, "This is beautiful!"

How I wish that all visitors to my studio could appreciate the beauty of the nude, as did that elderly lady. On occasions a decorous visitor - young rather than old - averts her eyes and departs the studio faster than she came in.  

In contrast to pictures of one of my earliest sculptures, the most recent pages of my book Notes on the Nude contain notes and images of two of my most recent. You will find the serialization of the book at notesonthenude.blogspot.com    


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