For my second piece about 'Love' at the 2009 Jelgava, Latvia ice sculpture competition I teamed up with Nicola Woods from England. I had asked her to join me in Latvia because my previous team mate Alan Magee had decided that working with ice and sand was incompatible with him wanting to be a 'real' artist. You see the 'Real Art' scene looks down on the world of Sand, ice and snow sculpture because they feel it is too populist and for Alan and other artists I know they had to stop this wicked perverted lifestyle.
For me these materials can be used to create art, it is down to your approach. Of course I know that much of it is not art but the same can be said for many materials be they 2D of 3D. I wouldn't say that as I paint my house that I am producing art. But painting a whole material subset with the one brush is short sighted and creataphobic. The 'Real' art world can be very conservative.
On second thoughts
For our team sculpture we had thought of doing something about voyeurism. Creating a real working telescope looking at two figures in the distance getting jiggy widit but the temperature was to warm and we were not sure if the ice would stay clear enough to make it visible. Instead we had another idea which was a bit controversial in Latvia and that was about Homosexuality.
Latvia was still quite conservative when it came to these things. Homosexuality had became legal after the fall of communism but gays were still classed very much as second hand citizens. The constitutions was amended in 2006 to prohibit same sex marriage. Granted, in Ireland it was only in 2015 that we finally got rid of our prohibition.
For our sculpture we wanted to tug at that nerve and make people realise that there are some, who heavens forbid also fall in love with someone of the same sex. It was a simple enough piece by design with two guys eyeing each other up across a crowded room. We wanted these two characters to be the focal point and so around them the crowd was made up of just symbols of women and men like toilet door signs.
It was a fun little piece to make. Each of us made a figure and then together cut the gender symbol people from what ice we had left.
Nickynackynu
Nicola is a joy to work with. At that time what she didn't have much experience with ice but made up for it with long hours and lots of fun. She had been carving sand for a while but I think she only had made one of two other ice sculptures. Normally she is an actress and in the evening times we would go back to the room to run some lines for a new play she was soon to be in. It was nice that we shared similar interests on and off site. She is now a very experience ice and sand sculptor that I always look forward to hanging out with.
Movie time
Again, like my previous two posts you will have to forgive my lack of images. I think I lost a camera card or something but I did have some video clips I strung together to make a little medley. Which you will find below. You can click the image for playback
▶️ DTube
Moral
So what is the moral of this story? Well, I think we all need to be a bit more tolerant of each others ways of going about living, be it our creative ways or where we want to stick their naughty bits. (Aesop , eat your heart out)
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.
Love machine - ice sculpture
Parting the Red Sea - ice sculpture
Godfather Death - ice sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon
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