StarCloud Manship Artist Artist and Studio Residency, Lanesville, MA |
“StarCloud" is an site-specific AR work in development for the Paul Manship (Sculptor, 1885 –1966) historic studio property now functioning as the Manship Artist and Studio Residency. The work superimposes a simplified but full-scale topographic model of the 15 acre property, obtained through drone based scanning. The work is centered at the site of an empty pedestal circle that used to contain Paul Manship's sculptures and its title derives from Manship’s name for the property, “Starfield.” From the launch point viewers can theoretically walk through the entire physical and superimposed virtual landscape, made up of transparent photogrammetric imagery and stars. I have started to repopulate the Manship sculpture circle with virtual sculpture that I, as the alternate virtual sculptor, find interesting and relevant to the property. The central figure is a towering, star-clad version of Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-1893) who was a controversial Civil War figure not unlike our current president. However, he marshaled the forces of good as an abolitionist and led the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. His family resides in the Gloucester area while Manship’s barn studio building was originally part of Butler’s quarry business complex. The second figure is a reenacted body pose scan of Paul Manship’s Venus Anadyomene in an early clay study, which I have re-present reinterpreted in terms of contemporary “Me-Too” movement issues of our time and which played such an important political role during the year of my residency here.
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StarCloud Beta, Paul Manship Home, Studio and property, screenshot, MA |