samanera

“We've got piles of broken terracotta flower pots in the garden, and I got this feeling I could create some kind of robes-based body-shape from the various fragments. With the aid of some strong contact adhesive I sat down one night and just assembled something that approximated some kind of ceremonial garment with big collars and the semblance of wide sleeves. I had a few references in mind: kimonos, Chinese opera, monastic robes, the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal, the character designs from The Secret Of Kells, Moebius's designs for the spacesuits from Alien, the tailors from Street of Crocodiles... Once I'd 'Frankenstein-ed' the body together, I used filler to mortar the whole lump together, before sanding it all back to arrive at the final form. Some white spray paint and a vinyl doll's head-on-a-lolly-stick later... and I ended up with these rather contemplative characters: part-monk, part-Pope, part-angel, part-cruet..." July 2023