I will start this post with a confession. I never read the book that I based this sculpture on and don't have much of a clue about the story. All I know is what I read on Wikipedia just to get the gist of it. It is a pretty famous story and revolves around a crazy doctor who takes a potion and gains a split personality.
Even these many years later I still haven't taken the time to read it. Shame on me. I do usually try to know as much about my subject matter as possible before I make a piece. For me I like to approach a sculpture in a personal why and try to tell the story in my own words or images but for this one there was little time between knowing I was going to make it and actually putting chisel to ice.
I promise now that I will search it out and read it.
So not knowing much about the story all I can really talk about in this post are the technical aspects of the piece. Ice sculpture can be really difficult to photograph but I think I was getting a bit better with these pieces but even still if you can't make out what is happening I will illustrate with words just like Robert Louis Stevenson did in the Gothic Novella 'Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'.
Dr. Jekyll was made with sharp faceted cuts to give him contrast against the rest of the sculpture. In his hand he pours his potion into a test tube. I made all the element separably and stuck them on. To get details like this it is much easier and you can also see the glass elements through the hands.
Coming out of the test tube is a wisp of smoke that raises up and flows to join the back wall.
I tried to blend this in to the background by hollowing out the ice from the back in a bubble pattern and then carved the Evil Mr Hyde's face in the back of the block in negative. It is interesting that Dr. Jekyll is the good protagonist in the book and Mr. Hyde is the bad guy. Even though to me the names would suggest the opposite.
This technique of carving in negative is something I love experimenting with. It is pretty difficult as you can maybe imagine. In your mind you must flip the X and the Z direction to make sure it looks Ok from the front through the ice. Go too deep and you have to go deeper with everything.
I liked the way it worked, it was like a ghost floating just behind the doctor being born out of a cloud of smoke.
In the front I built a table with some lab equipment. I is such fun to make all these little bits and piece and then stick them all together. Ice can be worked like wood and as this is another one of my interests I really enjoy this technique. It's like part carpentry, part carving.
When I work on ice sculptures lighting is very important so that I can see what I'm doing but when it comes to the final light of the piece it is like a whole other art-form to try and make the whole thing visible. As with all Ice sculpture it is very hard to capture them in photography but with these ones I think I was getting a bit better. The main trick is to have two lights one at the back and one at the front. These help show the form off from every angle. Still you really need to see an ice sculpture, or any sculpture for that matter in person.
Ps
Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.
Make a wish Astronaut - sand sculpture
Tag Rugby - sand sculpture
Annagassan Viking - sand sculpture
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