Virgina based sculptor Morgan Herrin hand-carves these outstanding mystical characters, godlike creatures that emerge from the combination of very distinctive forms and evolve into a human mutation. The sculptures are entirely hand-carved and they take hundred of hours to complete. The artist uses hand tools that have been almost completely phased out by modern machines, creating a link between past and present.
I immerse myself in the subject matter of my work. Often, several very different forms combine to create one physical object. My process is ultimately a result of the combination of my fascination with figurative sculpture of the past and obsessive research into a subject. I reference the passage of time and its effect on art in terms of both physical change and change in viewer perception.
In my most recent work titled ‘Otzi’, my subject is the 5,300 mummified remains of a man found frozen in the Otztal Alps in the 1990s. Rendering the form of the mummy in wood and intensely researching the subject became a way to connect personally with the life and death of this man. He was frozen in an unusual pose which was, when oriented upright, almost a dancing gesture and reminiscent of a crucifixion.
(via Morgan Herrin)
