I found myself fascinated with some of the artists included in our List and collected imagery from each of them though only a few really really moved me. I was extremely drawn to the detail of Tip Toland's work and felt inspired to attempt to include some of that character and detail that brings her work to Life.

As the sculpture I am working on is to be a monument to a circus performer I knew well I wanted to bring some aspects of circus into the piece and found that works by Linda Ganstrom exhibited a kind of circus filligree or fleur de lis carved into the figures.

These two artists combined inspired me to really stretch my ideas into avenues that interested me as well as fit the nature of what I felt would be important to make the piece really match the man that was being memorialized... When I began to look at Thaddeus Erddahls work the pieces began to slide together.

 
 I could visualize a piece that started at the base as old cracked wooden circus art and begin to transform into finely carved old chipped wood before resolving itself  into more realistic human features towards the top of the piece. It would be old and crusty and used well much like the man himself. I decided to pose the figure in the climactic moments of his sword swallowing act as the death defiance exhibited in his circus work seemed appropriate to represent the way he lived his life.

As I researched in the Library I came across two other artists that have worked in clay and worked figuratively. A Terracotta piece by Isamu Noguchi...

And a clay sculpt for an Art Deco Bronze work called Spirit of Flight by Charles Umland.

While these works do not color my present project as much as the others, the gestural quality of Noguchi's work and the overly defined, thin, stretched figure work of Umland will certainly come into play as I begin to work.

Brian Kooser
MFA Candidate Sculpture
Central Washington University