Moments Later
Moments Later oozing with colour and dripping with dew
Moments Later is a sculpture that explores themes surrounding the immediate future and its potential for fruition ... the moment when everything changes, floating, and melting.
I set an intention last Fall to be comfortably and unapologetically psychedelic. Embrace and follow the trail mix to see where it leads. I wanted to trust that my intuition and imagination would collaborate into something rad. I am continuously inspired by the flow of nature through time. The way a surface will hold light and the visual patterns different angles produce when they contrast. I see each piece as a brand new thing to the world; I'm creating new species and setting them loose. Every one has its attributes, its systems, its own instincts and physical look. This story felt so clear coming through. It's my own warped perception of nature's perfection. Moments Later is the first sculpture I knew I loved right away.
Bottom detail
In the Fall, when I began building Moments Later, things were so melancholic. The feeling of time passing right in your face, all the tiny deaths around us. I would ride my bike slowly, gazing up at dark sky, damp, black-brown reaching branches. Fluttering off with the last push ... golden leaves but with dark fractal veins. Helicopter seed pods, fluttering down toward my face. It’s over. There is something I love about it all letting go, just hitting the ground and lying there. So quiet, timeless, like we’re floating, waiting, melting back to the Earth.
Moments Later
The Kernel Cracks Open
Future Pours Out
The moment everything changes, it's incredible the difference one moment can make in our destiny, and the wonderfully magical "what if" of the near future. Although I have many moments where my fortune has radically shifted, the most powerful experience I have is giving birth. The long agony and drive transform into insane endorphin love and connection beyond anything else. The moment everything changes is powerful and just around the corner.
Overhead Detail
Maui. We left the snow and went to Maui. It was life, every plant choking out its neighbours. Swirly ocean, red dirt, and pinky-purple sunsets. All melting together. When I returned home I tried to build drippy details. I coaxed them along with the MIG welder turned up pretty hot and supplemented with the same mild steel wire I use to build out my smaller details. It helped build mass up much faster, but still the process of emulating melting low points was a slow but interesting process.
Floating is something I work at regularly in my sculpture work. I love illusion and movement. Somehow, a hover seems like a captured moment in time. I started building her in the Fall from the inside out. The interior kernel and external husk is bent and shaped from 20 gauge steel. To put that into perspective, it's a bit thinner than a sixteenth of an inch. You can watch the stop motion video I made of its construction Here. I practiced my new TIG welding skills on the joints, smoothing weld over the seams, and attempted to suspended a steel seed tucked inside the main frame. A little bit of magic.
Full side view
Moments Later
2017
30" tall
Photos: Lee Orr www.leeorr.com
Castlegar Sculpturewalk 2017 Between City Hall and the Cop Shop