Untitled (Mum's Green Fingers)

'Untitled,' (Mum)
Plaster, gold, ceramic, earth, Echeveria plant

I've been working on a new sculpture for an upcoming exhibition at the Hunt Museum this August as part of the Curators choice. It is not going as well as one would have hoped, but fingers crossed the piece will be a success.
The first cast I made of my mothers hand was not as successful as one would have hoped, the bolt to hold the piece came through the palm and the mould didn't come up the wrist far enough. Ideally I wanted the plaster to be black but that is another blog post. Unfortunately I couldn't re-use the mould so this is really a one off.
I went to IMMA last week to catch the latest exhibitions and was impressed, for lack of a better word, by the 'mistakes' in the artwork hanging in the gallery. Blurred, low quality photographs, some with to much flash, etching plates not wiped properly at the edges leaving a black plate mark on the page, and unfinished, barely started canvases that really had no point being there. It just goes to show what you can get away with.
I suppose I shouldn't be to surprised, the majority of my work is glued back together, crooked, scratched or relatively imperfect, a lot of it is to due with materials, cost, lack of skill, ext.
But after seeing the work by some very famous artists on Tuesday with their few imperfections it almost gives one permission to 'go with the flow.'
Taking this to heart I was inspired to go back and work with the hand I casted earlier, ignoring the screw peeping through the palm and the blemishes the plaster left around the base.
One of those ah-ha! moments where it all just came together.
Ideally I would like to see this piece displayed on the gallery floor, away from the viewers direct gaze. In some of the photos below I experimented with adding a photo with the piece, working with 3D and 2D together is a direction I would like to move towards in the future. The photos are old family photos of someones garden I had off hand, think I prefer the first version in this post.
One could say this is a portrait of my mother who is a gardner with very green fingers.
It is based on nature and our connection with it, the green fingers are substituted as gold, gold the sacred colour, the life source. The hand hovers over the plant protecting it, willing it to grow. Perhaps the photo of the garden is of a memory or a look to the future of what this plant might become apart of,  the owners own little garden of Eden.
I like to think of it as a little meditative piece that encourages you to look and observe, if you don't look down and around you, you miss out on a lot of little things. Not everything worth seeing is staring at you at eye level. You need to take care of the little things.

A behind the scenes shot of Ma trying to help me photograph this piece.
My Mum has the patience of a Saint and is always willing to help me with my work, she will drop everything to help me and that means more than I can say. She is my studio assistant, my model, my best critic, and one of my most positive and encouraging supporters. I'm lucky as an artist to have both the support of my parents who have never questioned my choice to be an artist, who will make me go into the studio to make more work, update this blog, ext.
Thanks Folks!