The matrix - ice sculpture (Dolphin special)

I'm back with another sculpture, It has been a very busy couple of days with work and play with my son. A certain thing happened that for me, when I started my Hive journey 3 years ago seemed like a dream. To one day become a Dolphin. I know that for many it is probably not that impressive but for me, One who has tried to play the game of Hive as it was first advertised to me it is quite an achievement and proof that it is possible to raise up the ranks with just your content and being socially minded . Having experienced other social medias in my day I never felt I was getting anywhere but here I feel I have grown and know that I still have more space to grow. I was never a big writer but in the back of my mind I always had what my English teachers told me. 'Write about what you know.' and I know Sand, snow and ice sculpture. So that is what I have been doing. I have over twenty years of work which is now turned to dust or water, what remains is photographs and memories and with Hive I have found a place for it to live on.

In many ways this is a personal project for me. Documenting my work is something I have tried to start many times in the past but it very soon fizzled out. With hive each post feels like a first draft of a chapter from my memoirs. I can get feedback from the Hive mind and each upvote is like a book advance spurring me on.

I have met many cool cats along the way. Anyone who has commented on my work has been great support, I won't name you here but you have all pushed me to keep going. I would like to single out @demotruk for his being very supportive to the Irish members trying to get started, organising meetups with great chats and having a wealth of knowledge to impart.

Reaching Dolphin doesn't change much really but it was a goal I've had from the start and I really thought it would have taken longer. The last few hardforks have been great for content creators and curators alike and I hope it continues to improve.

Anyway, onward and upwards. Now back to the feature presentation.

Caught in the Matrix

I had documented this sculpture in my early days of Steem. All excited was I to post posts I just selected sculptures at random and stuck them up. Then one day it occurred to me that I should really do these in chronological order and even though my first few were pig awful nobody was paying much attention to me anyway and I should just swallow the red pill and dance like nobody was watching, because they weren't. So every now and again I will have a sculpture you may have seen before but the post is updated in technicolor and with a new script.

Take 2

I really enjoyed this movie, the others lost their way, I thought. They all became so big and flashy. With the first, like all hero movies the origin story is the part which is most fun and filled with possibilities. As the franchise goes on it feels like they are trying to milk it for all it's worth. In 'The Matrix' we say amazing effects and characters which we could relate to. It all felt like something new even though It had a very established lineage.

I was very happy to be tasked with creating an ice sculpture based on it for the 2010 Roermond ice sculpture exhibition where the theme was Hollywood.
Given a wall of ice 5 meters long by 2 high by 25 cm wide and told that I had to keep it as a wall due to the pathways through the sculptures so, 'no going crazy outside those dimensions'. The sculpture would also have to look visually interesting from both sides. I know that ice is transparent but this is a difficult thing to achieve with an ice wall. Very rarely do you carve detail on the back as it will disturb the image from the front.

I decided on carving the three main figures pretty much like on the movie poster but still wanted to give the piece some sort of depth and other elements to tie in with the story. Neo was carved in positive while on the other side of the wall I made the wonderful Trinity, ah! Trinity and Morpheus in negative seeing if it was possible to make this thin wall a bit more 3D. Amazingly mixing the positive and negative worked really well and the small figures seemed to float in a space beyond the sculpture.

As a finishing touch, to break up the ice a bit and to give a mid point in space I made the rest of the wall into the weird font that appeared on computer screens during the movie

Luckily when viewed from either side the crystal clear ice allowed the sculpture to work visually.

Strangely, Neo looked a bit like the Terminator so they got a double bill for the price of one. It can be very difficult to get a good likeness in ice especially of someone as bland as Keanu Reeves ( Sorry Keanu). You can really see the chisel marks on his face but after a few days these melt away.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Flaming pumpkin Skull - sand sculpture

Saint Killian - sand sculpture

Untitled - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite

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