A stone head by artist Olle Brandqvist. The kind of stone used for this one is diabase; originally grey but polished it becomes black.
In this year’s sculpture festival, another and considerably bigger head that the same artist is working on has been moved into town, allowing people to watch him work:
He is mostly doing some polishing now, because the actual cutting is too noisy.
The original block of stone used for this sculpture (granite this time) weighed 14 tons. When the sculpture is finished, this one too will have a polished surface (the darker colour you can see beneath the ear).
As you can see, both stone heads are of irregular shape. As you walk around the sculpture, looking at it from different angles, your impression of the face changes. The artist says this is meant to remind us that there are many sides to a person.
In Roman mythology, there is a god with two faces: Janus. He was the god of gates, doorways, beginnings and endings. The month of January, which begins the new year, was named after him. Janus is most often depicted as having two faces or heads, looking in opposite directions – into the future and the past.
Writing this, I’m reminded of an article I read just the other day – or maybe it was said on the radio. Anyway, it was about how these days, we spend a lot of time and energy just on creating profiles for ourselves, on Facebook and other internet communities (like Blogger…)
This in turn reminds me of an early blog post of mine entitled Multiple Me. Follow the link if it tickles your curiosity.
Being in a reflective mood, my thoughts also go to one of my favourite passages in the Bible. If God had a blog/ Facebook profile, this would be it:
When God calls Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses argues with the Lord:
“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses: “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”
Exodus 3: 13-14
2 comments:
I did go read Multiple Me and read this one also. you are so right, we are putting our lives out there and some are creating what they think others want. i think you and i and the ones i follow are for real, but we have no true way of knowing that. you said you put age 00. on facebook i wanted very little info, so i could look at photos of my brothers family and my friends family. i put fake answers and under married or single i left it blank. a few days later, i got a facebook from a friend i had not seen lately and she said did you get divorced? by not typing anything it added single. that is thee tpe thing that can happen.
I like the heads and the fact you showed the size of them with people for a reference point. even us as humans look different when we look at differnt side of us. and while i am typing i see cinamon rolls below tempting me
Your comparison to Janus is very apt! The faces are irregular, but then every person has an irregular face. Even very pretty people do not have perfectly matching sides of their faces. I like seeing that patch of unpoloshed stone. On reading your older post, it was very interesting to read your thoughts on being 00 years old and what happened. Perhaps you'll be an internet Peter Pan, never ageing! I'm loving seeing all these sculptures.
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