#edward barton

A delightful set of simple small Cat statues I sculpted for the miniature set of the stop motion animation film ‘Isle of Dogs’ by Wes Anderson. In this film cats are worshipped by the ‘bad guys’ and these statues were depicted as Idols displayed in a traditional Japanese ornamental garden.

(LP. Bonjour rcds. 1988) [GB]

Full size clay sculpt of a contortionist. This was designed to be fitted tightly inside a glass box. This was sculpted on anatomical principles without any model using a fairly complex armature I designed especially.

This third scale maquette was made to be digitally scanned and enlarged to 2.2m by 3d printing. This will then be moulded and cast in lead. This is one of two figures I have been commissioned to make for Oxford University, on a currently ongoing project. They will replace two entirely missing figures from the set of 9 muses that originally adorned the roof line of C17th Clarendon House, originally sculpted by John Van Nost. There are no surviving references of the original sculptures, so these were heavily researched and based on the style of the 7 surviving muses, which are quite quirky to say the least, and the challenge was to keep this sometimes awkward style. Lead was the casting metal of choice for sculpture in C17th England, as Bronze casting technology was still only practiced as an industrial process reserved for cannons and bells.

I was was commissioned to sculpt this reproduction by artists Jake and Dinos Chapman to replace a very well known original piece of their contemporary sculpture that was destroyed in the Saatchi art warehouse fire. The only reference available was a set of the original catalogue photos. I calculated and reproduced the original pose and made an armature design using a simple triangulation process of key points from the different photographs. Now this would be much simpler in digital sculpting software, but I was using a pencil ruler and tracing paper.

This is a good example of the type of architectural adornment and enrichment that I frequently have to sculpt for film sets. These tend to have to be produced on a very fast turn around in no more than 15 or so hours, so don’t look too close! Enrichment is great exercise.

This was fascinating commission to sculpt a reproduction of a stolen historical relief sculpture. Lululaund was the Romanesque Revival-style house and studio of the Bavarian-born British artist Hubert von Herkomer, completed in 1894. The piece was originally sculpted as a tribute to his wife Lulu and displayed in the Rose Garden, which later fell into disrepair. The first photo is my clay original, and the second photo is the installed Bronze cast. The final photo was my sole reference of the original. Can you tell the difference?

I sculpted this portrait bust to be moulded as a breakaway effect for a full size statue for the forthcoming film ‘Judy’ directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. This was needed in a terrific hurry and luckily I had some good orthographic zbrush renders to go by, and it was completed in about 30hrs. I carved it first in polystyrene with precise silhouettes, then shrunk the surface back by 6mm and added a layer of wet clay to model the details. Some might ask why this wasn’t printed or milled seeing as a Zbrush file already existed, but it turns out humans are quicker than the machines, and we can sculpt beautiful wet clay! Production design by Dennis Gassner.