The Early Stages of Arena

One of the many pieces I am working on in the studio right now is Arena.  I fabricated the actual stands of the arena about a year and a half ago, and was keeping it as a potential piece for either the In/ConFLUENCE show at Quad City Arts or Pop Culture Palimpsest at The Figge Art Museum. As it turned out, I didn't have the needed components around the studio to spark any ideas on how to finish it (or at least any ideas I was remotely excited to pursue).

So, if I have learned anything over the years, it is to not push a piece that isn't ready to be pushed/explored.  That is why I keep several pieces active/ongoing in the studio.  If I'm stuck on one project/idea, I just move to another one.  Somewhere in the process I will learn/see the thing I need to learn/see to move forward.  Sometimes that window of waiting until I learn/see what I need to learn/see can take years (or even over a decade for another piece I will talk about in a future post...).

Anyway, what Arena needed was for carved faces/masks/spectators inside the four windows, something for them to stare at (spectacle), and perhaps an outside entity providing the spectacle/distraction.  So here we go...

That's all well and good, but I need to have something to be the recipient of all of the gazes from the stands.  I need that spectacle/distraction I just talked about.  How about a lollipop?

The crowd.

That hot lollipop action.

Now for the first wave of color.

Time to contemplate options while the color dries.