Every time I produce a new piece, I try to document the process– perhaps it’s just vanity, or perhaps I am worried I will forget how something is done, or, most probably, I just want people to know how time consuming and complicated the process is.

When I was in school I had no interest at all in representative or figurative work– I was a hard-core postmodern conceptualist, and I really rolled my eyes a lot when we had to do things like make armatures and scale maquettes. So I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have, and have had to re-learn a lot of things on my own. But the process is not so different now than it was a hundred years ago. We start with a maquette (which is an impressive French word for a model).

Armature for maquette with Owen's 19th Century study of gorilla and human skeletons

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