Sculpting a Salmon

Before I sculpt something, I usually… look at the thing I’m gonna sculpt.

There’s multiple times of sockeye salmon, though, and this time I’m making a male spawning phase salmon, which is important for me to make notes about since I’ll be making different types later.

As I was researching what different phases of sockeye look like, I got insight into different ways to approach how I want to do the memorial (imperfections in scales, differences in appearance in intersecting phases/gender/ages, etc.) The diversity of a single fish sort of justifies it to me to keep going with it, because all the questions that I keep asking myself keep getting decent answers back as I think and learn more about it. Must be destiny to make these fish.

Collecting photos for what I’d be making made me realize, salmon are kind of creepy. As I was making it, though, I figured maybe leaving out the sharp teeth in their fish mouths would help that problem (marginally). This gives me another thing to maybe write about in my CRP, though, as I’ve gotten into a discussion about creepiness in public art—because I’m making public art (about a sensitive topic) and a common complaint about them is either insensitivity or creepiness. I don’t totally hate certain creepy ones; I love the Blue Mustang statue in Denver, but if I make something creepy my art won’t get chosen in the first place.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I asked a few people what they thought; they said it’s good, they liked the scales. I like them, too. If I ask if they thought it was creepy… well, the consensus seems to be “it’s about as creepy as an actual salmon is”. So I’m just not going to ask people if they think it’s creepy from now on.