1st-draft-2010-snow-sculpture-model

Monkey versus Robot

Well. We got together Saturday night and hashed it out. Honestly, I think I was feeling pretty nervous (or what passes as nervous for me). We had never really not reached a consensus this late into the process – but there we were – sitting around a table with a bunch of clay and sketchbooks (and a few brewskies) with no real clear idea. There were a few on the table and there were debates as to the merits and non-merits of one, then the other. Then all the other ideas fell away as this new idea came into play.

Monkey versus Robot. As many of you know it’s a song and an album from Burlington’s own super musical star James Kolchaka Superstar. In it he sings about the age old battle of our animal natures versus technology. We’ve listened to Monkey versus Robot and Hockey Monkey many many times when sculpting, so its sort of weird that we didn’t come up with the idea of sculpting something in that vein before.

In doing a little research there are many artists who touch upon these two icons to symbolize the tensions and torsions of our human natures in opposition to the technological advances of the modern age. Adrian had even said earlier, before we sat down to discuss the sculpture, that this was the theme of the Fantastic Mister Fox, a movie they had seen earlier that day. There is even an Iphone app! I do not know how my animal nature knows how to even deal with an Iphone app that pits technology versus animal nature!

So the sculpture now shows the robot with his ray-gun hand and the monkey with his banana-ray-gun. We will attempt to build the rays between them and the blast – where the two rays meet. At least that is the intention. So far the concepts that we have will not be possible at all if the weather is less then 75% perfect and I might even be lenient on that. There is also a bit of a snow moving job that goes along with this, utilizing the full scope of the 12 foot radius we are allowed to build out of the 8 foot diameter cylinder we get.

I’ve been pretty stoked to go and execute before, but I got to say I feel really excited about this one. Sarah got me a monkey belt buckle for Christmas and I see it as sort of a sign that the timing is right.