Finally! Got Motivated And Inspired To Make A Life Size Outdoor Sculpture.

one thing i'd suggest is a grounding rod, it may be a lightning magnet.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Mike, it's pvc pipe, plastic. Like I said a new medium for me.

oh ok, never mind then. looked like metal. in that case, make sure its staked to the lawn so it doesn't really walk off.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

I think it looks very cool in your photo so I'm sure it will look great when you install it outside. It should be impressive if it's that tall.

Thanks MM, but the photo is not my sculpture, that is a Alberto Giacomitti sculpture which is what inspired me, his sculpture or a similar one sold for a record breaking $114 million dollars, mine so far, cost wise I have invested $44. Dollars. Lol , Tomorrow I will post images of mine once I have it installed, it will not be a typical yard placement.

Mike, not only will it not walk off, but it will be very difficult to steal.

especially if you can some how work in large cow bells into it.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

No cow bells on this one Mike, if someone wants to steal this one they will have to work for it! It's all about the placement, you'll see what I mean tomorrow, hopefully, if I can pull it off since I will be trying to install this myself, and it's a good 7 or 8 feet tall.

What really has me excited about this project is that is has sparked my imagination and now I'm thinking of doing a whole series of larger than life sculptures that can be seen by all the vehicles as they pass the front of my house. I have some 150 foot of frontage to use as an out door gallery, these sculptures will be offered for sale, since I'm on several acres of land I don't foresee running out of display space anytime soon. This material is much less expensive to work with than copper, just 1 lb. of silver brazing rods cost me $115., then there is the copper at $4.00 per pound and then gases for my welding tanks cost another $100. to fill and it goes really quick when working on a life size sculpture as does all the materials needed, this is a great alternative that's way less expensive and much easier to work with.

Mario, when you get a chance you might like Germaine Richier as well, she is one of my favorites. Especially her insect human ones.

Thanks Ronald, I'm gonna check her out right now.

Ronald, her work certainly looks like she was also inspired by Alberto or vice versa!

Contemporaries, so hard to tell. Alberto being a dude was given more credit.

Small sculpture I purchased about 25 years ago. Might take me a bit to get the image

Awesome sculpture, love the movement and the textures! Thanks for sharing it :)!

- Xueling Zou
https://about.me/xuelingzou

Ronald I wanna see it, I love intrigue. Matter of fact I can't wait for tomorrow so I can get working on my sculpture , I want to see my sculpture mounted already.

Xueling, thanks for the compliment but I can not take credit as the image is of an original Alberto Giacometti sculpture, totally out of my league. But I will post my own original one tomorrow hopefully, looking forward to your thoughts on it.

Not a good shot, will try for a better one soon.

I'm totally impressed, Mario.

Go for it, Mario.......love this direction !!!!!!!!!!!! and, of course, your 'inspiration", none better..........

very exciting! u go for it Mario! you seem to be multi talented. will u be collborating with the dig on this at all? its a shame he keeps being kicked off, at school they used to make u face the wall, or put hands on your heads... or slap you unconscious lol. its a shame i thought u 2 were fertilising each other at one point. anyway, need to cook a tasty breakfast. im gonna sculpt a fried egg. on tasty toast. chow.

Show me the money!

Thank you all for the encouragement! I got it mounted this morning and it was a lot easier than I thought given the size and height and doing it alone with a ladder balancing on the back of my pick up truck bed. Now I need a title for this, so any suggestions will be considered. I am very pleased with it given it was a spontaneous sculpture whose idea was conceived in an instant. I painted the white pvc with a mirrored chrome finish and the result was pretty amazing in that it looks and feels like stainless steel. The wheels are spinning now and I'm thinking of the next one. So far I see it draws interest from passersby. I'm thinking a large geometric shape for the next one, put it will require bending the 2" or 3" pvc pipe and that can be challenging given it's inclination to kink or collapse.

That's fabulous Mario...If I saw that, I'd be stopping to talk to the artist :-)))

There is a road on Vancouver Island, can't remember the name....over the years people have decorated poles....creatively...people come from miles around just to see them.

You could do the same thing...or strategically place them around town....then have a easter egg hunt...only not for eggs, for sculptures....

I love what you've done.

Cheers, Barbara

That is very cool, love it!

oh thats a bolt of lightning! maybe it will glow at night

the nuts are missing




well almost......
hehe
boo!

Mario, for a stylish, distressed, stained finish on the sculpture's legs, just wait for a male dog to stroll by to add the finishing touch. ... This will increase the price ten fold, as it will now be a human-dog art collaboration, perhaps the first formal one in all recorded history !

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ !!

Thank you all again, I really enjoyed making this one so much that I went to the plumbing supply and this time I upgraded from 1 pvc pipe to 4" inch drain pipe and I bought 100 feet of it. So I spent the last three hours under a dying tree in my backyard and this is what I came up with. But first let me explain, I have two loved pets that are buried under these two large oak tree, Miki our dog and Max our cat and now one of these oak tress is also dying. I couldn't think of a better place for this sculpture as in the front of the house I have no trees. But the sculpture is so large maybe 25 Ft. tall by 20 ft wide and spans to 35 feet towards the top of the tree which makes it visible from the road some 350 feet away.

i like this one too

a touching spiritual tribute.

personally, id put a description up - it will bring a few tears to the people. they might hug it. before the neighbours think some nut has vandalised your struck tree. people will come. stick ur website on too with some prayer of hope for the tree...


holy tree we admire thee
blessedly

love it!

Thank you Jason, but my neighbors are the fishing hunting type,that like camouflage furniture, at most they will think a tornado struck overnight and planted these pipes in the trees, lucky for me I fenced my yard last year. Lol

I Liked the poem!

@Robert, at most the dog can only pee the post unless he is a pole climber.Lol

Wowa! That is cool! Great idea using the poles for inspiration.

Thanks Ed, and I managed to mount the "Tree Of Life Sculpture" alone and without using a ladder, with no equipment and without climbing the tree at all, the first piece of pipe is about 35 feet off the ground! Start to finish it took just under 3 hours and total cost was $56 dollars. The next one I have in mind will be made of rigid 5" pvc and it will be a linear sculpture 20 Feet tall.

Just got back from the home depot with 60 Feet of rigid 3" PVC pipe and a case of Gold spray paint and a few PVC fittings, this is a lot of fun, feels like I'm a little kid playing with my legos, except on a grander scale. I only have a vague idea of what I want to sculpt, but I'm sure the sculpture will align it's self as I proceed into it's desired shape.

This sculpture was a lot more difficult to make than it looks, these 10 ft. rigid lengths of pvc get pretty heavy, it was difficult doing this without help. What I envisioned and what I ended up with is different and that's because the material had a say in the design. I do like the completed sculpture, the gold paint gave me a very authentic brass metal finish enough that it could fool even an experienced metal worker. Several vehicles stopped to ask questions and also to tell me how much they liked the Pole Man sculpture and wanted to also see the one I was working on once completed.

So very cool!!

Thank you Lisa, it's been 3 days and 3 sculptures and it's left me pretty drained, now I need to cook a nice meal and rest. I don't think I could do the art without a dose of OCD!

I feel much better now that I had a good meal and a few glasses of wine, anyone else here that just goes on creative tangents that last for days at a time? Well at least it got me out of the house and I took my wife out Friday night and last night for dinner and a nice break, today I cooked after completing the Geometric sculpture.

I really like Pole Man

Any potential issues with local ordinances or utility companies?

Thanks Robert, the pole is on my property not on public property, I don't think I should have any problem, if someone says anything I'll take it down and mount him on another pole.

Even if the pole were on an easement, I think that it would add aesthetic value to the easement, but it still could raise some issues, if somebody hawk eyed your local statutes.

Hopefully, everybody will be so captivated by the sculpture that this thought would never cross their minds.

That's what I'm counting on Robert!

Mario,

I have been afraid to look at this thread for a few days. I am pleasantly surprised by what is in this thread. Great work.

My practical advice for Pole Man? Instead of waiting for some sort of possible complaint and moving him to the next pole, if you get an offer to buy the piece sell it.
It might be a very salable work. It is very unique and well done.

What happens to tubular tree if the wind picks up?

Dave

Note about the sculptors who inspire you and Ron, Jeff Koons' clean style is just the opposite. And we miss the human side of what was done as modern art, we reject Koons' work.

The modern was rejected in its day as well.

Dave

Time for a press release to your local community outlets, Mario! :-)

Be prepared for a lot of new business to come your way!

Thank you David, I'm glad you put fear aside and came in for the plunge. Lol I think Pole man is going to be a neighborhood Icon of sorts, I once made a large copper Don Quixote and a windmill and had it outside until I sold it at an art fair, I had people from the neighborhood stopping by to tell me how they miss not seeing Don Quixote. Well as for "The tree of life" sculpture last night we had strong winds as some tornados blew through some parts of Florida as well and the sculpture is still there.

Thanks Wendy!, I was thinking about calling my local newspaper they often do stories of interest, but I want to wait until I have some more sculptures in my outdoor gallery, I'm working on a 20 Foot tall giraffe, I have here standing and all that's left to do is giver her a nice paint job.

S o here is my newest addition to the outdoor gallery, "Backyard Safari", she measure 20 Ft tall. I asked my wife Alina to be in the photo so you get a better idea of the scale of the sculpture.

love it
that giraffe is awesome
i see u dressed up
nice!

Lol, Jason, thank you, you mean my wife dressed up.

Now all you need to do is get that giraffe installed in front of a government building for a hefty commission fee.

.. OR

Make it more controversial by positioning it in a dead position next to a pvc stick-figure sculpture of an attractive female trophy huntress with a sign professing her love of big game animals.

lol, go for it! a garden zoo of giraffes
go the whole hog add motors, lights and noise. souns like a police car though. giraffe squad


oh ! sorry i meant not you, got my glasses on now. hope she likes sculptures. hehe.

Now there's a thought Robert, some good old SHOCK art!

Jason, she is my biggest fan, lucky for me me. Lol

i really like the giraffes Mario, hope she lets you sell a few.

Shock art, yes, that's what I had in mind.

Do a piece parodying the giraffe huntress. ... Do a piece parodying the lion huntress. ... And let us NOT forget that dentist dude. ... Gotta fit the elephants and rhinos in there too.

Stick-figure-sculpture parodies of trophy hunting. ... seemingly good candidates for national attention.

Those are all good ideas Robert, but I find it hard to create in that manner. The same goes for when people say to me, "make more of those you well sell them" but where is the inspiration? I usually gravitate to new things or things I haven't done before. Once I start thinking about making the same sculpture more than once I loose interest. I'm always looking for the next new thing, that's where the challenge is for me, once I've done it then the magic kinda wears off. This is why I would be a terrible commissioned artist.

Beautiful sculptures Ronald and Mario!

"...once I've done it then the magic kinda wears off."

As it should be.

Love it!

Thanks you Suzanne and Robert! Joe, I agree, that's what keeps things fresh and keeps me from getting bored.

I'm late coming to see this thread, so glad I looked. Great pieces Mario! I especially like Pole Man and Backyard Safari.

Recreational vs. Functional

Inspirational vs. Commercial

There are different reasons for different people to do art. ... It's good to know what your reason is.

Thank you Jim, each of those has been my favorite while I was working on them. Now I'm working on a very large horse that I'm hoping I can get to stand on his hind legs but I ran into problems when I when to stand him up. Seems like the weight was to much and it wants to collapse under his own weight. I'm going to have to see how I can fix this. I was thinking of getting some rebar and inserting it into the pvc pipe or maybe insert a larger diameter pipe over the hind legs. I'm going to have to strengthen all the cemented joint with screws as well. Today I also started using a new technique with the pvc which is heating it with a heat gun and bending the pipe in to various curved shapes, this has given me a much broader selection of subjects to sculpt and cuts down on the pipe fittings which get costly.

Robert I'm also not opposed the commercial aspect, in other words after I'm inspired to create something if someone comes along and wants to purchase one I'm totally ok with that.

Yes, of course, ... shocking people is NOT very artful in my book either.

That's not to say that I do not shock every so often, but I am NOT driven by an intent to do so.

Robert I'm not opposed to shocking people either so long it's the inspired work that's doing the shocking and not a deliberate intent on my part. I'm not opposed to controversial art either if there is an underlying meaning or statement the artist is trying to communicate.

Well I've been it at it all day with this horse sculpture, again traffic was stopping in front of the house while working on this one, people I don't know stopping to ask questions and admiring the sculpture. This was by far the most complicated one to do. The size and weight was significant and I had to add over 150 screws to all the joints and I inserted additional pvc pipe into the existing pvc as well as over the existing pipe to make it more rigid. Even with all the reinforcement I still had to do the installation in a away where the upper body of the sculpture was supported on a structure or it would have been impossible to stabilize it with just the sculpture legs. It was night by the time I finished but I was still able to get a photograph.

I was pretty amazed with the ability of my canon sx60 low light photo capturing capabilities, the stars and the moon that appear where not photoshoped either.

Btw, by the time I finished this sculpture and installed it without any help or equipment I was pretty exhausted and did not put a lot of effort into the photograph, I just took the shot and went and ordered Chinese food and picked up some cold beer!