Why are we here? - ice sculpture

With the drums of war beating yet again, I like many people think the world has gone mad. How the egos of these small minded men in power can threaten the lives of millions while they will be far removed from its consequences. But to be honest though these idiots aren't the ones I am most confused by. With this sculpture my team mate Alan Magee and myself wanted to explore the soldiers that put these crazy plans into action.

We made this piece in Jelgava, Latvia as part of an international competition and it is a moment frozen in time where a lull in a war brings about a moment of humanity and wondering of ' Why are we here?' (Which was the title of the piece)

Inspiration

Inspiration for a sculpture can come from many places and I really enjoy exploring different subjects in my work by not sticking to a certain theme. This piece was inspired by the tree which stood in the center of the area we were given for our work, We might have been forgiven for complaining that we had this big object in our way but for us it was a wonderful element to add to our piece. On this tree was a big crack which ran the length of the trunk and gave the plot a definite dividing line. This got us thinking about borders and different sides that we could contrast and so we decided on two sides at war.

The two soldiers reach across the battle front to get a light for a cigarette. I imagined that their conversation would be about all the things that made them so similar and wondering why they were standing in this frozen world being pitted against each other by some gobshites sleeping comfortably miles away.

In a way a very simple message but it was liked very much by the audience and also the judges who awarded us first prize.

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Ps

I was away for the last while working hard on some sculpture projects but now I'm back a rearing to go with making more posts.

I've made the little icon above so that viewers know that the images in my posts are clickable to show the larger images if desired.

As I spend more time on Steemit I see some great initiatives from users trying to improve the sites functionality. User @ma1neevent suggested a new tag to help find original content so I will now use the tag #original-content in my posts . Check out his post to find out more.
https://steemit.com/original-content/@ma1neevent/original-content-start-using-this-tag-for-steemit-original-content

Oh yeh! and thanks to my now 253 followers for showing an interest in my work. It's much appreciated.