Face Your Fear

Face Your Fear (detail)

Face Your Fear

Face Your Fear - installation view, Chaz Howkins, 2017, installation

I created this installation in response to a week spend in Venice.  As someone with a phobia of pigeons, I spent most of the week in distress, having to dodge crowds of pigeons in the streets and hide in toilets when they wandered into cafes.  I chose to exaggerate the scale of my pigeon sculpture to make it more fearsome, so that the audience gets an idea of how pigeons make me feel.  There is a painting of Venice hidden behind the pigeon to represent how pigeons got in the way of fully enjoying my time spent there.

Process of creating Face Your Fear

Process images of creating Face Your Fear.  The sculpture was created using polystyrene, which I cut  by hand with a saw because the hot wire machine was out of use, and then coated in paper mache.  I chose for the finish to be bare newspaper as I felt newspapers and pigeons have a lot in common in terms of how they are discarded and overlooked by most.