Justin Clumpner- Final Project

This project began with me wanting to take the portraits I normally paint and transform them into three-dimensional objects.  I have been making portraits influenced by the religious icons that have surrounded me my entire life.  Instead of representing the moral narratives of Biblical stories, I like to represent symbolic narratives of contemporary atrocities and imagery from our consumer-based culture.  I have heard many people from many walks of life refer to America as a “Christian Nation,” but I cannot find any saints who embody the American ideals of our contemporary criminal justice, immigration or foreign policy.  With my portraits, I attempt to create more accurate saints for our “Christian Nation.”

To make these Icons in sculpture, I began by using a two-part liquid plastic and some face molds I had saved from a teacher demonstration I did years ago to make a couple of three dimensional faces.  I then used wood and newspaper to build an armature.  From there, I poured material over the armature.  For the smaller of the two, I used a two-part, expanding polyurethane foam; for the larger, I used plaster.  Looking back, I prefer the ease of use and cost of the plaster, but the durability and light weight of the expandable foam is a real asset.  

I have been experimenting in my paintings with mostly realistic portraits surrounded by a geometric form somewhere between hair and a veil, loosely painted with thick applications of acrylic with a palette knife, while using painters tape to hold a crisp edge.  I used the pouring as a way to emulate the texture of the palette knife painting.  I wanted the structure to be both textured and chaotic.  For this, I looked to Ken Price and his sanded acrylic finishes.  After researching how Price treated the surfaces of his ceramics, I poured layer after layer of acrylic paint over the surface.  

In the pouring, I experimented with different applications and viscosities.  One of the more fun techniques was to pour a more viscous paint mixture over the form, and then add dollops of thicker paint and watch them almost sail down the more viscous paint leaving thin streaks of color as they went.  I used heavy body acrylics to fill unwanted divots and create variety in the surface color when the objects were sanded smooth.  Lastly, I applied heavy coatings of acrylic glaze finish to make the sculpture shine, almost like glass.  On the smaller of the two, I then went back in and sanded away the gloss and shaded the face with highly saturated colors which I then coated with white, so that the under painting barely showed through.  I wanted the face to be almost mannequin-like while at the same time having a little bit of natural coloring, with a matte finish to contrast the highly glossy finish of the rest of the head.  

I am rather pleased with the results of these experiments, and I think I will attempt a few more. I would like to sculpt a more stylized version of a face to match the style of my paintings.  I would also like to bring in the concept of collage by building the armature of the structure with random junk and hardware as a very common object assemblage; I would then pour the material and allow parts of the assemblage to remain exposed or protrude from the plaster.  I could even see purposely building the armature to direct the plaster pouring in certain directions, purposely leaving other areas exposed.  I could imagine an entire line of these portrait busts as some sort of line of junk Saints of our consumer culture.

Process pictures can be found on my Instagram account here(and I've added some below).

Sculpture 1- Height ~20" 

Sculpture 2- Height ~36" 

Below is a finish comparison between my sculpture and Ken Price.

Here are process shots.