Sculpture by the Sea

Australia’s largest outdoor show for sculpture has been going on since 1996. Bondi Beach’s Sculpture by the Sea is an amazing gathering of artists from around the country to participate in this long upheld tradition. More companion exhibitions have been sprouting up ever since the popularization of this coastline exhibit. One at Cottesloe Beach and another at Aarhus in Denmark are complementing the movement started by  Sculpture by the Sea.

The large-scale exhibition is an annual event always held during the hot summer months. The event started out as a brainchild of David Handley. Handley saw that there was an outdoor park in Klatovy, Bohemia and he wanted to bring that kind of event to the artists of Australia as well. He was inspired to start a yearly ritual of exhibiting artworks from various parts of Australia so that the whole country could also bask in its own aesthetic evolution and culture. The entire long-haul exhibit spans from Bronte Beach to Tamatama Beach to Bondi Beach. The two kilometer long coastal sculpture exhibition draws in crowds up to half a million people in number. The hundreds of participating sculptors create larger-than life visual attractions for the tourists and locals to view alongside the magnificent seascape scenery of Bondi Beach.

About the CAD Frontier of Sculpture

Computer aided design has been around for decades now. With the emergence of platforms like AutoCAD, Maya, Solidworks and the rest, 3D modelling has reached new heights in today’s modern communities. We’d like to wonder about the future of sculpture with regards to these fat paced developments. Surely there are quite a number of digital sculptors already at this point. The jewelry industry has already made CAD and CAM (Computer aided machiniery) an integral process of their manufacturing line. Will art also lean towards the digital frontier?

When speaking of sculpture CAM, the degree of difficulty and cost for production are currently much higher than those counterparts that rival painting and photography. Photoshop for example, is easily obtainable, and printing options are plentiful. Lithography is also a high class media that digital 2D artists can use. The problem with replicating 3D models is that CAM technology is very limited to those with more abundant resources. one machine from Solidscape or ZCorporation (3D Printers) can fetch up to over 25,000 US dollars, and not every artist can afford to shell out that kind of money. Likewise, another obstacle is the fact that these 3D printers can only ‘print’ using wax or composite plastics. Many of these media aren’t traditionally used as materials for fine sculpture. The bright side for them is that with the emergence of contemporary sculpture, media selection has broadened and plastics are now sometimes involved with different styles of hybrid sculpture.

The future of the three dimensional art world is soon approaching our doorstep, and when it does, we’ll have a lot more interesting stories to tell about the progressions and novelty discoveries that arise from man’s growing desire to improve. We here at Artsculptor just hope that the development of these capabilities will not hinder our true definition of art. Art is a human rebellion against the mass-produced. It is an original expression of one’s own self that should not be categorized with routine and robotized products.

The Walk of Ideas Sculpture in Berlin

Six sculptures were designed by Scholz & Friends for the 2006 football world cup (FIFA). These six sculptures were set in Berlin and made a part of Germany’s Idea campaign; “Deutschland – Land der Ideen”, and were named “The Walk of Ideas”. They were put up for a certain period of time, but made a big impact on tourists who visited the nation for the big event. Among the sculptures, there were many that conveyed thought, idea and innovation throughout the country’s history. These sculptures cost about 300,000 euros each from start to finish, and were made with a new kind of material called Neopor. The sculptures consisted of these designed subjects: A series of books with names of German poets and writers, a giant tablet signifying the milestone of medicine, a few huge musical notes to symbolize bach, beethoven and the rest of their musical prodigies, a silver car signifying contributions in the automobile discovery, A modernized foot ball boot, and Einstein’s equation: E=mc squared. The feedback from the worldwide community was simply astonishing. The British Times, CNN and many other coverage media companies broadcasted positive clamour for the overall success of the campaign.

They also said that Germany was turning away from pessimism and starting to convey the fact that it was lead by people with vision and a sense of national innovation.The only downside to this series of sculptures was the fact that some people complained that their artistic value was compromised by the “platitudinous advertising”. Examples of these complaints were the fact that the football shoes had stripes that pertained to the Adidas brand and the silver car looked almost exactly like the new Audi model of the time. Some people thought that corporations were behind these seemingly innocent discoveries within the artworks. Despite this, the event was a good thing to have for Germany, and the world appreciated this well-prepared acceptance of the 2006 football world cup. For a land with its history, Germany has really grown into an excellence of creative minds and great thinkers. (Picture Accreditation: Walk of Ideas (Berlin) + Photography by Lienhard Schulz)