Here’s the second exhibit for the Welded Steel wing of the FarrFeed gallery. This is one of my larger pieces at almost five feet long and just as tall, entitled appropriately “When Geese Ruled the Earth.” (1991)
As you can see—I hope—the sculpture is loosely based on a Canada goose skull from the vast collection of such marvels that I used to own. My method for obtaining clean models was to separate the head from the carcass (usually roadkill), then leave it under a bucket tucked inside a bush. After about six weeks, the ants would have picked it clean, and I had another trophy. When we moved from Maryland, I gave the skull collection to the same fine gentleman who took free possession of this work of art—with my blessing, of course.
This wasn’t an easy piece to transport to an art show, so it didn’t travel much. Instead of being built up from a continuous molten acetylene gas welding bead like the Alien Rat, the monster consisted of pieces of heavy, flat plate steel that I cut out, welded together, and banged noisily into shape. The last image in the series shows one of my outdoor art show displays that features the beast. As you can imagine, I never had much competition in this line.
You also need to know that on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where we lived at the time, Canada geese are something of an icon and a totem animal. Slaughtering them by the thousands was and is a regional industry that I loathed, so the giant goose skull is both a statement and a protest. No wonder that it didn’t sell, but I came close a couple of times.
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We have it! We have it! It lords over our garden still. Bit rusty with some moss on the north side but still there! Ahhh … if only I had one of the wind dragons too!
Delighted to hear it’s still exerting its presence in your midst! I’d love to see it rusty and mossy. That would be so cool.
Great to see welding equipment being used in the art world and not just industry.
How large is the skull? It is difficult to work out just from the images.
Hi Claire! Sorry I haven’t been able to reply until just now. We’ve been on the road to godforsaken Tucson, AZ.
The skull is quite large as I recall, maybe 4.5 or 5 feet long and stands about that high. I thought I’d put that info in the post, but a chunk of text must have gone missing during editing.
Keep checking back: I’ll post more welded steel sculpture photos when I get back to Taos.