Side Effects - Ekphrasis

​Originally, I saw this statue as an beautiful representation of how something fractured could be made “whole” again. How it could be appreciated, even now, as something worthy and magnificent. 
But when I considered the background, I thought my usual clouds - light, fluffy, cheerful - would be too jarring against the sharp fractures in the statue. After weeks of working on the piece, the emotional tone had changed for me. Now, I felt it conveyed a different message - mankind’s careless destruction of art and nature. With all the horrors that come with war, one side effect we tend to forget is the loss of historical monuments and art - like this statue. A piece of our collective past is destroyed in an instant. There is also the damage that has been created over time. Mankind is destroying what makes our world so unique - nature. The melting clouds is a representation of global warming, specifically the drought and heat waves that affect us here in San Antonio. 

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