“Living Water” is a SALA (South Australian Living Artists) exhibition, hosted by the Lutheran Church of Australia that ran throughout August 2021. Artists were encouraged to explore the influences faith plays in artwork. This is the first of two paper sculptures I’ve created in response to the theme.
Based on the Bible story in John 4, a woman comes to the well to draw water. But through her encounter with Jesus she’s captivated by Living Water, her life changes direction and she returns home without her water jar.
The water jar, well and woman are sculpted with cast recycled paper. Images are modelled in plasticine and plaster molds are created into which paper pulp is pressed. This process is detailed in my Paper Sculptured Photographs post.
The scene is set within a water drop and I experimented with cutting and embossing to decide how best to represent the gentle water ripples that surround it. This sculpture also includes ‘behind the scenes’ three layers of cut and embossed droplets descending. Due to its translucency, I’ve chosen paper vellum to depict water.
It had its challenges! At A3 size, these are much larger than my usual paper sculptures, so working on and supporting larger sheets of paper was the first challenge. The second was the complex framing required for the bas-relief and layering.