WHEN DOES A MODEL BECOME A SCULPTURE?
A great friend and fellow technical illustrator recently said that we had to find something unique to do with our talents in order to make a living these days, I wonder if I can use my modeling skills, can a model ever become a sculpture?
An 18th century ship of the line cut-away model by Brent Meheux
I really don’t remember when the first model was made, I suppose you could say it started the day Gag gave me my first lump of Plastering all those years ago. Over the years it’s just always been there, and as those years have passed the models have evolved, grown ever more complicated as I’ve steadily pushed my skills. I’ve, until recently, just thought of it as a past time, a way of unwinding, but now I find myself beginning to wonder if this is a way in which I could make my mark, make my living even. And as usual it’s all down to Barbara, and a few random conversations.
When Barbara and I first got together I joked that my modeling was one of my faults that she’d have to get use to, small parts and glue all over the coffee table of an evening and the like; and then she saw the first finished model, a cut away of a 1920’s yacht if I remember rightly. “Love that’s no model, that’s art, what do you do with then when they’re finished?” she asked, “I give them away love, or throw them out, why?” Well she was going to have none of that, she took that first boat and put it for sale in the window of her shop in Honiton, asking for what I thought was a ridiculous price, I was so wrong, it sold in less than a week. Since then I’ve started to see them in a completely different light, but still only as models, I mean they’re not real art are they?
An 18th century ship of the line cut-away model by Brent Meheux
The models always start with the technical drawings, products of hours of research on the web, in libraries and in museums. Then these sketches and any photographic research is used to produce full plans, and it’s from these plans that I then decide on what is needed to complete the task, wood, metal, will any casting be needed, etc. Over the years they have got more and more complicated as I have always strived to outdo what ever was the last project, and as they have grown in complexity so has my determination to show all the details, always looking to in some way to cut away the skin for the viewer. A common theme for most of my work really, even as an illustrator at Uni I was always drawn to the cut away.
Supermarine SB6 by Brent Meheux - an original peice of artwork
Even on tour in Afghanistan I just couldn’t resist the temptation to be fiddling with bits of wood and metal. I’d taken my Apple laptop with me and on the hard drive were loads of images I’d been collecting of Sopworth Camel’s, a WW1 British fighter, before I knew it I was spending every odd moment not working drawing up plans, but what would I use for materials? Barbara had sent me out a few basic tools and glue by now, all packed in a shoebox, but no materials. And so I started to scavenge, nicking coke cans the second lads had finished with them, pinching odd bits of wire the engineers had left lying around and breaking up pallets to get to the wood. I never did get to finish the plane, just not enough down time really, but it became just the distraction I needed.
Sopworth Camel, a WW1 british fighter, scratch built by Brent Meheux in Afghanistan
Back home in the UK I carried on in he same old way, working on the cut away of the ship you see here in my spare time, college during the days, TA at the weekends, just waiting for the summer, the chance to begin full-time on my artwork. Chatting away with Barbara one evening she asks what I plan to work on first, will it be another model? Oh no I reply, models aren’t art, so what is she asks? And to be honest I was stumped for a good answer, what makes something 3-dimensional a sculpture rather than a model? At college the following day I found myself chatting away to Paul Shakespear about the 2nd year Graphics students I’m teaching for him when we went off on a tangent as usual about our own art. By way of background information I should point out that both Paul and I trained as technical illustrators, producing cut-away illustrations of cars and planes by hand, a completely useless talent after the advent of the PC. Paul had a rather interesting point to make, one that sat in my head all day, “we’ve just got to find something new and original to do with the talents we have.” All the way home on the train I mulled over what he had said, wondering why it had struck a cord with me, like an itch you can’t reach it was annoying me, and then it suddenly seemed to make sense.
An 18th century ship of the line cut-away model by Brent Meheux
I chatted over the conversation with Barbara, asking her a seemingly simple question, “when does a model become a sculpture? Don’t know; the answer is when it tells a story and evokes emotions.” I’ve got this really simple and solid idea that I just may have found what I was looking for all along. You see to me my models, and models in general, all seem to be ‘static’, they are often an attempt to reproduce in miniature everyday objects or scenes, how ever complicated they may be they at best simply act as a learning tool to illustrate how something in the real world works. Now take a sculpture, this is a completely different beast, here we have something that is alive because it has something to say, a story to project, and because of this it evokes emotions in you and I. To illustrate this point look at the horses head sculpture here. Hardly any material is used, and yet you are left in no doubt as to the horse and its suggested movement.
Horeses Head sculpture from 'the art of the hores'
A story can also be told about the impossible, or the imaginary, such as Stephane Halleux’s work, almost whimsical, and yet so tactile.
Sculpture by Stephane Halleux
As an artist you’re always looking for ways to make a living, always trying to work out what will sale, get to tied up in this and you miss the whole point of your gifts, at the end of the day great art comes when there are no patrons, when you just produce work for no other reason than it’s inside you and you just have to get it out. Using this as a start I started to look again at my artwork based on my latest interests, ‘a moment in time’, looking at just a snapshot of an event. This then morphed with my ‘cut-away’ models and ‘technical illustrations’, a cut-away is in fact a moment in time. The conclusion is that I need to get real ‘movement’ into my ‘models’ in order for them to evoke emotions and tell a story, do this and they will become ‘sculptures’.
All I’ve got to do now is await the arrival of the summer to begin, and god it’s only Febuary…
Posted by Brent Meheux - 11/02/12 - Tags - Sculpture, models, model making, scratch built
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