The original inspiration for this sculpture comes from an exploration of movement and how to portray it in the third dimension. I hoped to bridge my experience as a scientific skeletal articulator to a more artistic, expressive realm. By using a lamb’s skeleton I sought to emulate traditional asymmetry of contrapposto statuary, while the removal of the lamb’s limbs attempts to obscure the immediate recognition of the form. In studying the movements of animals, I attempted to replicate this in its purest form. The lamb is composed in an upward arch to replicate the dynamacy of an animal being struck by arrows. The straight, black arrows add an element of geometry to contrast the natural form of the lamb’s spinal column. One arrow purposefully contradicts the others, slanting at an opposite angle to its peers, providing a sense of unease to an otherwise regulated and restrained form. The addition of a curvilinear base provides movement to a frozen moment of violence. By preying upon the empathy of the viewer in using the remains of a formerly living creature, a sense of movement is inherent, despite the object’s stagnance. In this, one can find a sense of gestalt.

In constructing this piece, I threaded thick wire through each individually drilled vertebrae, used thick adhesive to glue the ribs to the authentic arrows. Due to the light-weight, brittle nature of the young animal’s bones, the form seamlessly floats between the arrows with ease, in stark contrast to the violence being enacted upon it.