The young man in the photo above is Mauricio Alvarez, a second-year student at PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) at the time he sculpted my head. In that same year, he won a coveted prize in a sculpture competition which used another male model. The model held an incredibly difficult pose for the 3-hour sessions over a two-week period. All of the sculptures were good, in my opinion, but Mauricio, the youngest in the class, came out the winner. I posed additional sessions for Mauricio, since he chose to do my head from the pose in the photo below, and the recorder I was holding was in the way for the "head-on" view he wanted. The student shown in this pose is Janet McShane, subject of another post.
The deal about the extra posing for Mauricio was supposed to be that I would get a copy of the head in exchange for my extra time posing for him. Unfortunately, it was Mauricio's first experience attempting a rubber mold, and it did not harden properly, forcing him to do the easier plaster mold, which allows one copy only. In place of the head, Mauricio gave me a mini-headstone in marble, a reclining nude with the carved word "Son," as if for a youth's headstone. It sits now in an honored place in my front flower garden.
No comments:
Post a Comment