Foam Block Scuplture

Requirments :Sadly the Foam Block Sculpture was our last assignment in the sculpture unit. In this assignment, we were told to carve a piece of styrofoam resembling a cultural symbol. The styrofoam sculpture needed at least one hole that went through the sculpture, and negative space within the work such as holes that went deep into the sculpture to create volume. It also needed to have no part of the original surface of the block, this meant each side of the styrofoam piece had to be carved and could not be right angled shaped.

Achieving the Requirement :I achieved the requirement of creating a whole by making the whole eyebrow of the moai sculpture a whole. I create negative space by creating small cuts into my styrofoam piece to resemble the original Moai sculpture made out of the rock as rocks as uneven ridges and layers, so I created the cuts to portray the ridges. 

Process :Then we spent the first part of class brainstorming and drawing different cultural symbols we could carve out while researching the meaning of the symbol. Then once we had chosen a cultural symbol to carve, we began cutting large chunks of the styrofoam to get close to the end results. We cut the styrofoam using different types of knives, from knives that could cut large chunks of styrofoam to knives that could be used to scope styrofoam and create negative space in the form of holes. Tools were are used to crave more detailed and smaller parts of the styrofoam were done with loop tools. Then once we finalized all our drawing and made sure our whole sculpture had a smooth surface and no foam was sticking out, we were allowed to paint our sculpture any colors we wanted to using acrylic paint.

Challenges & Successes :I found it very difficult to create the hole in my styrofoam as I decided for my whole it would be the eyebrow part of my Moai sculpture. However, since I chose creating a whole for the eyebrows that meant my whole had to be in the shape of a unibrow rather than the shape or an actual hole which is a circle. And since the eyebrows are right below my eyes and near my nose, I had to be very careful when craving the hole as I didn't want it to go into my eyes and create whole in my nose. This toke a while and a lot of precise craving with small tipped knives and a lot of retouching to my eyes and nose every time the whole went into the eyes. However, once I was finally done carving and retouching it I was pretty proud of the outcome. Onto a success, I was very happy with the outcome of the acrylic paint I coated onto my sculpture as I was trying to create an blue ombre effect and I did that by adding more and more while onto my blue paint as I progressed down my sculpture.

Inspired Cultural Symbol :The cultural symbol my foam sculpture was modeled after is the Moai Statues. These statues are found on an island called Easter Island, also referred to as the Rapa Nui which is Polynesian island found on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. This island was terrorized by the Rapa Nui people who built these statues to represent monolithic human figures. They built over 288 of these statues ranging from various heights during the time of 1250 and 1500 CE. I choose this symbol because I was intrigued how a big rock was able to resemble human-like features so realistically such as the arch of a nose or the shadow that comes from your eyebrows above your eyes.  made by one big rock looked like, this inspired me to make my own moai sculpture based off one big block of styrofoam.