Leap of Faith
This one is not only quite big, it also took me ages to do. After finishing it, I had trouble finding anywhere to put it.
The bunny is polymer clay and the glider is a combination of wire, paper mache, string, and polymer clay. The cliff is paper mache painted with acrylic paint.
I hadn't worked much with paper mache so I was still experimenting. An unfinished version stayed in my garage untouched for about 6 months before I finally figured out what was wrong with it. The plane was abandoned for long periods too. I'd come back to both of them many months later and totally re-do the cliff and figure out yet another way to to fix up the plane. The whole thing took a year and a half to finish.
The bunny has a wire up his leg and out his torso just below his arm and then it becomes part of the plane, stretching all the way to the tail (I found the wire lying around the garage - a friend reckons it's tungston) . I made a plasticine version of the bunny first and used it to gauge which way to bend the wire, then built the bunny around the wire.
I modeled the plane from a book on Otto Lilienthal, a glider pilot from the 19th century who actually managed to glide up to 250 metres. It was never considered 'flight' a la Wright Brother's because these flights were never powered. The picture I modeled my sculpture on is from an attempt by Lilienthal at powered flight - it was an ornithopter with battery powered flapping wings. The picture shows him standing on a cliff just like the one in my model with this insane contraption around him. He never did fly it which was probably wise of him. To read more on Lilienthal click here.
When this project was stalled and abandoned in a corner of the garage, some visitors came over and had a look. The cliff was really stupid looking, the plane had an unfortunate tilt too it and the wings were far to "V" shaped. One of these guests was a hang-glider enthusiast. He took one look at it and said, "well, I have to tell you that it won't fly"(he was German too, like Lilienthal). I've not seen him since so I don't know what he'd say now.
This piece was finished in 1996.