Social Climber – Commission

This piece was commissioned for a client through a gallery in Devonport.  The client had seen images of my previous work along these lines and wanted a piece in the same theme.

I have really enjoyed working with these oval forms from my very first piece up to and including this most recent one. 

I designed the ovals to make optimal use of the properties of the Oamaru limestone.  The gentle unfussy curves of the ovals creates a softness to the form, and when light falls on the ovals from behind it creates a wonderful warm golden glow in the holes that go through each oval (yeah I know you can’t see the glow in these pictures, I don’t always get a chance to get good pictures in the right light before delivery to the client).

For me each individual oval is like a simple single biological cell, and yet somehow each cell manages to have its own unique personality.  Their interaction with each other is playful and slightly chaotic.  They are as much about the empty space in the middle of them as they are about the physical structure of their shell.