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.

Strada Veneziane exhibition

Face Your Fear - exhibition view

Strada Veneziane is an exhibition of 4 artists responding to a trip to Venice, each of us chose to respond to the city rather than any of the artworks we saw at the Biennale.

Unexpected uses for a cardboard box

Cardboard Boxer, Chaz Howkins, 2016, cardboard and tape

A visual pun. A small scale maquette for a sculpture I feel would be most successful if created life-size.

Sculpture Maquette

Middle Finger Maquette, Chaz Howkins, 2016, clay

I created this maquette using clay and may venture into creating a life size version using body casting.  The expressive hands cover where the breasts should be in an attempt to express a sense frustration from being restricted by your physical form.

Reconstruction

Mutant, Chaz Howkins, 2015, reconstructed Barbie dolls

After playing around with deconstructing and reconstructing Barbies using photography, I decided to turn this idea into a 3D sculpture.  I used the limbs of four dolls to create a mutant Barbie creature, which I feel appears quite haunting as its arms are outstretched as if it is trying to beckon the viewer towards it, making the viewer feel somewhat uncomfortable.  The creature reminds me of something a demented child might make out of its toys by ripping their limbs off and melting them back together.  The limbs were joined together using a hot glue gun, but unfortunately the glue was not strong enough so the piece fell apart before I could photograph it properly.

Metal Workshop

Impaled, Chaz Howkins, 2015, metal and Barbie parts

After learning how to weld, I decided to create a sculpture using Barbie parts and metal rods.  As I rarely work in 3D, I encountered a few problems whilst putting the piece together.  I didn't plan out its structure as throughly as I should have, meaning it didn't stand up how I imagined and I had to attach an extra rod between the base and the body of the doll.  Also the piece is quite back-heavy so appears to be close to falling over.  However, I feel I learned from these issues that I sometimes work needs to be planned out in more detail rather than being created spontaneously.  I think the resulting outcome is quite successful as the innocence of the doll is destroyed by its disassembly and the juxtaposition of the harsh metal.