The stunningly detailed sculpture shown above and in the video below may only be made from paper - but they are being snapped up by art fans for equally stunning prices!
Husband and wife team Allen and Patty Eckman create clay molds and then put a specially formulated paper pulp into their molds and pressurize it to remove the water. Allen explained their technique: "It should not be confused with papier mache. The two mediums are completely different. I call what we do 'cast paper sculpture'."
The pieces depict traditional scenes from Native American history along with some wildlife vignettes and commissioned subjects. The artists write: ..."Some of them we create are lifesize and some we scale down to 1/6 lifesize" ... sometimes taking up to 11 months to make each piece.
In 1987 Allen Eckman stumbled onto cast paper as a fine art medium and instantly recognized the beauty and possibilities for creating high detail, strong, acid free, pure, fine art sculpture. It took the Eckmans many years to unlock the secrets to the medium. Discoveries included paper formulation, equipment and tool innovations and their unique paper processing methods. You cannot get where Patty and Allen Eckman are by pulping cotton linters in your kitchen blender.
However!....if you're interested in trying this exciting new technique, you'll be glad to know you can purchase a booklet from Eckman Fine Art where you can see an overview of exactly how the artists create their work at a master level or buy one of their DIY kits "Patty's Flowers".
Patty's Flowers are a series of beginning level products for creating beautiful life-size fine art cast paper sculpted flowers taught in the Eckman Method® program. They are the first level introduction to the Eckman Method. Read more about these products at Eckman Fine Art.
Also in development is the complete Eckman Method® Program in a dowloadable format. The process taught through the Eckman Method® includes working with museum quality hand made Eckman paper and bonding agents, using casts from Eckman paper pulp, then altering and transforming them into finished works of art using Eckman techniques such as forms, templates, other casts and freehand sculpting with various hand made paper products and tools manufactured by Eckman Fine Art.
Thanks for putting this post together. I do have to correct you on one thing, and that is that these are not sculptures of Cherokees, but probably Lakota (maybe Comanche or Kiowa, but I can't tell them apart). I know the artist says he has a Cherokee ancestor, but these are obviously not Cherokee people. The Cherokees lived in the south east, in what became Tennessee and Georgia. As a matter of fact, Tennessee is taken from our word for that river, which was more like Tanasi. But Cherokee or not, these sculptures are quite beatiful.
ReplyDeleteDear anonymous,
ReplyDeleteMy information came from Eckman website and that is how they described their sculptures. However, I will revise the wording on my blog to be less specific. Glad you enjoyed the sculptures!