Custom Order Butterfly Blessing

The butterfly blessing is done finally!
I finally got the butterfly I was looking for to mount on the young mans outstretched hands.

As you may recall from previous blog posts Here and Here I have been working on this for sometime, and although I got underway rather quickly, I did have a hard time getting this common butterfly in a humane way (from a butterfly farm), but the patience was worth it and the final product is wonderful.

A re-cap on who this was made for. This was a custom order initiated by Ryans Cousin Nathan. The sculpture depicts Ryan, a young man who suffered from depression and took his life in stages like a butterfly which in the end of his line he ascends into the butterfly, you can also see it as him holding the butterfly as if about to send a butterfly signal to his family for he now sends his loved ones signs of his life after death through the life symbol the butterfly. Ryans mother Sharon Gorker Norris, was inspired to write a book which is a compiliation of a series of journal/diary entiries in which she shares her story of tragedy turned triumph in Our Butterfly Blessings.

Custom Orders

Over the past few years I have made quite a few custom orders, and they constitute a large percentage of business that I conduct. There has always been a problem with custom orders though, many people want to be immortalized in the clay by having a portrait done in miniature and often I have to tell them why I cannot do it. The reasons are 1. The figures I work with are tiny, details are hard to pack in, 2. I’m just afraid to push my limits. I would often tell people that I would do a certain skin/hair/eye color and they would know it was them, but now I have decided to meet halfway with the customer. I will now actually attempt to make it resemble you, but it becomes butterflypersonized, which basically means that you are transformed into one of my creations but you were the inspiration for it. It gives me some artistic freedom from restrictions people tend to put on the piece, but it will (in all hopes) resemble you a bit.

My latest custom order of two little girls is the first in what hopefully will be many of my custom designs of people. I first sculpted the heads and then added them to the bodies when they were painted and finally made the hair. The patron did not want me to paint them brown so I left them the beige color the clay was already in. I think there is some resemblance, there are some issues with it that I have, but this is my first attempt and hopefully I will get better without resorting to caricatures which exploit features, not objectively present them.

So it goes.... I did the heads, the older sister first

...then the little sister whom I feel I captured more of as far as facial structure...

...next they got bodies, of course they didnt have breasts or anything, they are kids!

VOILA! What you see changed between two pics actually took hours...
Bam, got the curls going on and fully clothed, older sis puts her arm around younger to get some sense of togetherness.


... And finally the two were encased in a 5"x7"x5" cube which dwarfs the little inchlings. The patron wanted them to be surrounded by butterflies so thats just what they are. I cant say I love the end product, but the process of making them was definitely fun.