Tantalus - ice sculpture (remastered)
Tantalus was a Greek mythological figure. It is told that he sacrifices his son and served his boiled body at a banquet for the Gods. Needless to say they weren't too impressed and sent him for eternal punishment to stand in water beneath a fruit tree. When he tried to reach for the fruit it pulled away and when he tried to drink from the water it receded from his grasp. The word 'Tantalise' is derived from his experience.
Tantalising
During the 2003 Brugge/ Belgium Ice sculpture exhibition I was tasked with creating a sculpture based on this story. I knew that I needed in some way to show the anguish Tantalus must have felt as he reached for the Fruit and water never quite reaching either. I decided on this weird contorted figure with stretched arms and elongated mouth. I liked the idea of trying to show the movements involve In a static sculpture by kind of blurring the form. This is a motif I also explored in later works with very different outcomes.
Material's matter
The materials used were man-made ice and snow. The ice is crystal clear because it is made by keeping the water moving as it freezes but the snow is actually made from crushed ice which is then compacted Like the way I make sand sculpture. This (so called) snow had very dirty layer lines running through it which made for a very ugly surface. I then came up with the idea of using a blow torch to melt the surface and as it froze again a nice marble effect appeared.
This was one of my earlier pieces working with snow and ice and I wasn't that confident with the ice's strength as a material so, as you can see the tree was very chunky.
Why Remastered?
When i first joined Steem i was all excited and posted some of my favourite sculpture from over the years. When I settled in a bit I decided to post my work in chronological order and this one now fits into this timeline.
My style of writing has also developed and I have found other information to add to the sculptures stories.
Also some of these deserve a second outing so my new followers can see them and I can add them to my Steemitworldmap
So ever time you see a remastered post from me this is what I'm on about.
The marbled effect is really interesting: living in a hot climate, it's quite amazing to me to see what can be done with ice, I have never seen more than a slight dusting of snow
'Every fault has a fashion' as they say. The snow was made by a machine that spit it out onto the ground and when they came to compact it lots of dirt was also picked up, Not great for carving tools or chainsaw but It actually gave a nice effect .
In Ireland too it rarely snows so my only practice and experimenting are on projects like this.
Thank you as always.
Excellent work, considering that you don't have the means to practice
Congratulations, Your Post Has Been Added To The Steemit Worldmap!
Author link: http://steemitworldmap.com?author=ammonite
Post link: http://steemitworldmap.com?post=tantalus-ice-sculpture-remastered
Want to have your post on the map too?
Hiya, @livinguktaiwan here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made the Honorable mentions list in today's Travel Digest #376.
Please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider upvoting the Travel Digest if you like what we're doing.
Hi @ammonite!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 4.227 which ranks you at #2784 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 3 places in the last three days (old rank 2781).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 242 contributions, your post is ranked at #149.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
Indeed a very cool marble effect! Like it was made from stone out of a cave.
Thank you, Yes it gave the piece a more classical sculpture feel which I thought suited the theme.