Sculpting a Robot with Polymer Clay

Greetings!

I just made possibly my best sculpture to date. It’s a post-apocalyptic robot that’s battle-damaged and finding a beautiful butterfly.

It’s a mixed-media sculpture created with polymer clay, wire, foil, and cut-up pages from one of my books that was damaged.

I filmed the whole process and cut together this 10-minute video showing my whole making-of process, complete with descriptions of what I’m doing. I even throw in some robot-inspired poetry!

Check out the video here:

Here are some shots of the finished sculpture below. If you scroll through you can see the damage on the right side of his body—he’s even missing his right arm.

This piece feels more personal than any sculpture I’ve made yet. The last year has been challenging, with the house fire caused by lightning and moving to Mississippi for almost a year. But now I’m back in New Orleans and really feel like my artistic endeavors are taking off in a way they haven’t for a long time.

This piece feels like a description of how I feel - crawling through a tough and challenging time and finding hope.

One of the most symbolic aspects of this piece are the butterfly’s wings. I have a stack of books that are smoke-damaged from the house fire - the edges and some of the pages too smoke-stained for me to sell. So I cut the wings from one of the stories in my book, Visions from the Dream Gyre.

Here’s the passage from my story “The Iris” that I cut the wings from:

With two fingers, The Iris reached into her mouth and dragged her nails along the inside of her cheek, pulling out a butterfly’s wing, all golden and burgundy. Then she did the same to her other cheek, pulling out a second wing. When she put the two wings together they began flapping madly, lifting away from her into the air. She reached out and caught the wings, cupping them carefully in her hands, and as she slowly pulled her hands apart, the wings grew—and between the wings, and insect body formed and sprouted legs. She kept growing the creature until its body was almost half her size. Then she swiftly grabbed it and flipped it over her head and behind her, its legs wrapping themselves around her ribs and shoulders and chest, attaching itself to her back.

She felt the creature flex and stretch along her spine, and she touched one of its legs reassuringly. Then she took two steps forward and leapt down into the cavern of crystal, letting it envelope her as the creature on her back beat its wings manically to slow their descent.

I really love the idea of using my damaged books as part of my artwork. I plan on making more of these sculpting videos and continuing to integrate pages from my unsellable books into my sculptures.

Until next time,

Andy