THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 12, 1996 TAG: 9604120058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Student Gallery 1996
SOURCE: Teresa Annas, Staff Writer
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
AFTER WEEKS of hard work, Benjamin Brown's ``Utopia'' blew up.
The elaborate ceramic sculpture was shattered to bits earlier this year while being fired in a kiln at Nandua High on the Eastern Shore.
These things can happen when a clay piece has thick walls that may contain air pockets. And that was likely the case with Benjamin's ``Utopia,'' even though he had spent so many hours carefully hollowing out all seven of his sculpted figures, using a shaped gutter nail for a tool.
``I was so upset. I was like AAAAAHHHH! I went nuts,'' said Benjamin, a senior. It took a few days for him to get over the shock. Then, he rolled up his sleeves and went back to work.
``I figured, this is my last year I could enter Student Gallery. So, I might as well keep going.''
He gathered from the kiln every shard of ``Utopia'' - his loose clay rendering of men climbing on a rock, each one helping the other.
Benjamin, 18, invented his own solutions. He started by dangling the topmost figure from the art room ceiling. From that figure hung in mid-air, Benjamin reconstructed from the top down.
He glued together individual figures from how he remembered them. Then, he added on one man at a time. Finally, he replaced the destroyed base with a new one made of plaster. Then he spray-painted the whole piece gold and brown, resulting in a surface that resembles a metallic glaze.
Benjamin's agony turned to ecstasy when his name was called as an honoree during Student Gallery preliminaries on March 16.
``It meant a lot,'' he said.
While ``Utopia'' caused him the most grief, its companion piece called ``Anarchy'' had come in first. In that clay sculpture, a group of men are climbing a rock, but pulling each other down.
``I wanted the two sculptures to look alike, but to represent exact opposites,'' he explained. ``They are different ways to achieve the same means.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
[student art]
by CNB