Blood Sucker (based in Philiapian lore)
The bloodsucker, a shape-shifting monster that can range from the size of a spider to a bull. It feeds by rolling out its long tongue into its victim's shadow and sucking the blood from their body. Similar to a tick, the beast engorges it’s glands and becomes bloated, using its long legs it then crawls upwards and finds rest while it digests its meal.
My body of work is made of beasts, monsters, and folklore inspired nightmares that reflect narrative through visual and tactile sculptural forms. Photo etchings are displayed around the sculpture as stained glass windows surround a church. Crawling, licking and biting, this beast is meant to make the viewer uncomfortable and in awe. These feral forms create an obscure cavort of this malefic creature one can only find in ancient legends. The creature brings forth a new sometimes corrupted nostalgic, discomfort. The detestation of being touched unwantedly, fear of dark or dangerous places, and fear of being hoaxed by something seemingly harmless. All are themes in folklore, and in life. This is a part of the series of three creatures that I have created, rooted in lore meant to bring discomfort and an unsettled feeling.
To conjure these beasts, I first built the body structure out of insulation foam for a more structured base, then bulked up different areas of the figures with expanding foam. I used wire, tin foil and masking tape to sculpt the muscle structure and refine shape. In folk art, people used the materials around them, normally inexpensive and semi-readily available, ranging from mud to straw, to wood, to stone. My choice in materials came from the modern day accessibility to them, the inexpensive nature of which I got them and the amount of knowledge I had to work within a designated time frame.
The Bloodsucker is coated with a mixture of silicone and naphtha to give the visual effect of rubbery skin. Its tongue is hand formed out of silicone and pigment chalk. and its body out of insulation foam.
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