Layl's Silly Milly Art
Layl's Silly Milly Art
Layl McDill Polymer Clay Sculpture Gallery
She Made it Look Easy to Control the Rhino Puppet Show
Created Summer 2011
Inspiration- The funny thing about this piece is I didn't know I was doing a sort of self portrait of my life until it was almost done. The basic concept of this piece came to me as I was starting my month long road trip to California this past Summer. As I was driving I was thinking about a piece of art I had recently seen and the basic movement of the pose that the figure was in. Then somehow I thought of making a figure standing up on top of a rhinoceros. When I got to Kansas City I couldn't wait to draw the idea. As I doodled the idea of putting a puppet show on the back of the rhino came to me.
I was finally able to start this piece about two months later and had nearly finished the piece when one day my husband was carrying a bag of glass jars which I had bought for my classes. He hit the side of the wall with the bag and broke one and then set it down too hard and broke the rest. It was only about 30 cents worth of purchases but I was still frustrated. I wanted to scold him for being so careless but I knew this is how he is (I know hard to believe he makes something as breakable as tiles). Then I went to work on this piece and it was so obvious- He was the rhino and I was trying to control him. My daughter Elliot encouraged me to continue the metaphor to the characters in the puppet show to represent herself and her sister. She requested to be a crazy silly monkey and insisted her sister was a quiet panda (which is pretty accurate). .... Now if only I could have hair like her!
Technique- One thing about this piece is that there is a lot of red cane work that doesn't even show because of the overlap of the puppet show. I was tempted to try to use scrap clay or something like that but I felt like it would just work out better if I made the whole rhino and then added the puppet show. The rhino and the figure are separate pieces to make it easier for transport to shows but I left and wire extension that doesn't show coming out of the rhino's back incase there is ever a reason to permanently attach both pieces.
Oh and by the way the marionettes are moveable!