The Sculpture Gallery

On my travels, I came across this sculptor's works. It's a very refreshing and light-hearted style, I really couldn't help but blog a little about his work.

A man that holds a great passion for technology and art can be expected to end up as a graphic designer, webmaster or user interface designer, but this man took it to the next level. Meet Petrus Wandrey, techno-sculptor and designer. His proclamation of the Digitalist movement with his panel Science and Beyond at Fordham University in the late 1970's. Wandrey's style is deeply linked with the concept elements of computers and modern sciences. His usage of pixel-inspired traits in his artworks is a common part of his creative process.

Wandrey explored many field like furniture design, graphic design, textile design and the traditional media of painting and sculpture. He did a lot of computer-based designing in his early years, helping several clients like TransAtlantik Magazine make there way into the market. As an artist, he now integrates the various components into his style, but does this not only in the literal sense, but also in the sense of aesthetic inspiration. He studied diodes, microchips and circuit boards to visually create his digitally-inspired sculptures and paintings. Some of his group exhibitions include famous art shows at Bodenburg, Hamburg, Leverkusen and Berlin. Today, Wandrey's melding of digital and tradional art inspires the high-tech community to bridge borders and try creating new novelties for the world of art, science and lifestyle.

At the young age of fifteen, Jeremy Langford began his artistic experimentations with the medium of glass. Using an old ceramic kiln that he found, he began melting old and recycled bottles to create his very first works of stained glass.

Later on, he went to the London Film School where he met a good mentor that eventually gave him his educational foundation and practical knowledge on working with glass. This gave Langford exactly what he needed to pursue his real passion of creating marvelous glass art.  During the 1970's Langford travelled back and forth from U.K. to Israel and continued honing his skills in fabricating glass creations. He conceptualized several pieces which he later created on a monumental scale and displayed in several of the areas that he visited. His wife, the late Yael Langford, was a quantum chemist who together with him, studied the various effect of art on the human brain and consciousness.

Langford's contribution to the world of glass is vast, mostly comprised of great works set across municipal halls, museums and public or government locations. Recently, his studio has also been working on three giant sculpture pieces for the Trump International Towers, as well as another huge artwork for the Miami Four Seasons Hotel. His creations have spread across New York, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills as well. Langford's creative genius for glass sculpture has its foundation in his personal connection between art and spirituality. He often compares the tangible traits of glass to the human state of searching for a spiritual dimension. Today, many international halls including the Supreme Court Building in Jerusalem and the Brtish Museum in London take pride in housing the work made by Langford, because of their exquisite beauty and wonderful depth.

The Merlion or Singa-Laut in Malay, is the national mascot of Singapore's proud city. Designed by Fraser Brunner in 1964, the Merlion is an emblem of the city's progression into a modern age. Its composition seems to be like mythical combination of lion and fish. Now, there are 5 prime statues of the Merlion observable in Singapore: the original 8.6 meter Merlion at Merlion Park, The cub sculpture that stands two meters tall behind the main sculpture, the 37 meter tall replica with a viewing deck on the 9th story (located on Sentosa Island), the three meter tall polymarble statue at the Tourism Court, and lastly the same sized statue placed at Faber's Point.

The original Merlion sculpture/statue was standing at the mouth of the Singapore river, but it was moved after the Esplanade Bridge was finished in 1997. The Merlion also underwent maintenance from June to July during the year 2006, this was due to the forces of natural weathering as well as the water pressure from the river. One curious fact you may also find intriguing is the time that the Merlion sculpture got damaged by lightning in 2009. It was a late February afternoon when lightning stuck at the statue's head, breaking off some pieces. Despite this, they were able to repair the mascot and set it back to its proper place in no time.

Many of you do not know of the curious Bambara tribe located deep in Mali. They consist of an ancient society that uses symbolical sculptures as part of their daily ritualism. A Chi Wara, Chiwara or Tyi Wara is a figurine-like object that was carved by their tribe to represent their themes and stories. Mainly used either as masks or small sculptures, the Chiwara are a type of visual communication that tribesmen use to relate others with their agricultural and social activities. In Bambara, the word means "laboring wild animal, and represents the story of how the creation of farming arose in Bambara culture. Traditional Chiwara sculptures were hand-carved out of wood, however stylistic variations have been seen depending on the time and location that the artifact was uncovered or found from. Some styles that researchers have been able to categorize are the Bougouni or South region style which combines several animal subjects into the same composition, the Bamako or North region style where orientation is usually horizontal, and the Segu or Mainland region style where male sculptures are created with a vertical orientation and a triangular body. Aside from these, there is also one last style; the Sikasso region style where sculptures are made with a thin vertical orientation that resembles human anatomical design, but done in a delicate feel.

The Bambara story of agriculture revolves around the folklore of the hero Chi Wara, a half human and half antelope born from a union of the sky goddess Mousso Koroni and an earth spirit with the form of  a cobra snake. The Chi Wara came to the earth to teach humans how to sow and harvest vegetation.

The figure of the Chi Wara is traditionally a recreation of the character from the myth; a half human and half antelope creature adorned with emblems of farming. Its body is often depicted through long, slender orientations, symbolizing its descent into the earth (like the tools of a farmer plow into the fertile soil). Other elements of the sculpture may represent the plant to be harvested, plentiful water, and a bountiful harvest. Patterns sometimes imitate the direction of the sun's position in the horizon. Sculptures can also come in male and female pairs, denoting a sense of fertility both in human society and in agricultural activity. The Chi ware is indeed a treasure of the Bambara tribe that shows how artistic sculpture and visual symbolisms hold up a culture of human beings and their community.