Sculpture, 2025 - Hengst Studio

“Old Man, A Self Portrait”

Ceramic

24” x 6” x 6”

2025

This is an unusual piece for me. It is less about the simple fact of the figure’s volumetric energy and more of a psychological study … almost a portrait. It tells a story. I’m not sure what story but one senses a story. Whereas almost every other sculpture on this website does not tell a story. They all have stories. When and where were they made? Why did I make them? Who are they for etc? But they don’t tell a story.

Side note: I shot these photos of these sculptures in my studio in Thailand. I did the best I could with very few resources. Among other things, one of the challenges was to keep the multitude of bugs out of the pictures. Well, some kind of May fly made its way into this shot. So, there’s a story for ya!

“Venus”

Ceramic

15” x 10” x 5”

2025

Yes … another female torso with no head and no arms. It doesn’t have much for legs either. But I love this piece.

It took about 5 minutes to create. I grabbed a lump of clay from the pile. Plopped it on the table. Pushed it around with both hands for a few minutes and that was it.

Unfortunately it took 40 years of screwed up overworked pieces to get to this. Now I want to figure out how to make it 6’ tall. Hope that doesn’t take another 40 years.

“Walking Back Giacometti”

Ceramic

24” x 10” x 10”

2025

Alberto Giacometti is an Italian sculptor who is synonymous with mid century existential angst and the general state of depression associated with the great wars of 20th century Europe. Well, his work also resonates with the malaise of 21st century life in the developed world. But not entirely. Populism and the excitement that populist leaders have managed to stir up have at least pumped a little adrenaline into the old bones. It may be the shallow jolt of Red Bull but somehow or another I sense some meat on Giacometti’s Walking Man.

So here is my answer to that and MAGA. Maybe it’s no accident that this figure looks a little like the recently discovered victims of Pompeii’s Mt. Vesuvius eruption that instantly incinerated many of its population as they were just as quickly buried in ash. These documentaries keep appearing in my YouTube feed. At least for some of us, we are a prosperous lot. Surrounding ourselves with art and enjoying life’s pleasures. But like all people’s we are fascinated by an apocalyptic end. As well as a persistent fascination with ancient cultures. Who are we, we’re did we come from and what will happen to us. What could be more perfect than Pompeii … all that history and a truly apocalyptic ending.

Could that be us? Is the MAGA movement one last gasp of the desiccated corpse of modern man’s psyche before he finally gently retires into his life as a 2 dimensional consumer where all his needs are provided by robots? I think not. I think there is still real gas in the tank, some fire in the belly and forms that are swelling and limbless poses that suggests at least a little grace and a dollop of self pity … which is a least one form of self awareness.

Come to think of it, my like ceramic figure may be more Venus De Milo than Walking Man.

“Woman with Raised Arms”
Ceramic
34” x 20” x 15”
2025

My original idea is that this woman would be a complete figure made up of several distinct and somewhat disjointed pieces. Well, someday I may create the other pieces out of other material but for now it is a complete piece as is.

Oh, she was also going to be holding up a deflated male figure that was made up of vinyl … the same stuff that balloons are made of. I may still add this component as well if I find the right thing.

“Female Figure”

Ceramic

48” x 20” x 20”

2025

Not all art is made with lofty intentions. This was created with whimsical energy and intent. I literally used my leftover clay at the end of each day to make most of it. I would simply slap on whatever clay I had left in my work station at the end of each day with no idea or intention of what it would be.

About halfway to where it is now, but not knowing that was the halfway point, I did start shaping it with more intention and not just my leftover clay. At some point it started looking like more than a blob and even a little like a female torso … maybe even a Venus D’milo of sorts, or maybe Venus D’silo or better, Venus D’ sack-o-potatoes.

Well …why not? At some point I declared it finished and had it fired. I’m curious about how possible is it paint on clay.

Perhaps someday there will be a photo here of it painted. And I will paint it the same way I sculpted it, with whimsy and no lofty intentions.

“Bust”
Ceramic
24” x 20” x 20”
2025

This was going to be a whole figure. But it collapsed under its own weight so I salvaged the head and shoulders and let it be rough. The engineering of clay sculptures that are to be fired is trickier than if the intention is to create a mold and cast it. If it is to be fired it must be hollow and not have an armature. Clay is very heavy and has almost no compression strength or tinsel strength when it is wet. These strengths increase as it dries. However, its workability decreases quickly as it dries.

Eventually I will find a way to support the work in a way that the support can be removed before firing but left in place while I keep the clay wet enough to work it into the shapes and surface texture that I want throughout the whole piece.

The other way to do this is to build the piece slowly from the bottom up. That means that the earlier parts must be exactly right since by the time one gets to about half way up, the initial stages are too dry to adjust. This is fine for production art where each piece is an exact copy of the preceding piece. But this is not a viable way to create a work of art where the whole composition must be brought up together.

Nevertheless, this may be a case where the sum of the parts is definitely better than the whole … especially if they are separated from a squashed whole.

“Woman’s Bust”
Ceramic
20” x 20” x 15”
2025

This was to be the top piece of a figure that was going to be made up of deliberately assembled parts. That may or may not ever happen, but it makes a nice stand alone piece.

“Crystal Portrait”
Unfired clay
18” x 12” x 12”
2025

This is another study of Crystal who has modeled for me for many years. This time I made the piece with the idea of making a mold and casting it rather than firing it. As of this writing, in 2025, I have not made a mold of it yet. When I do, I will cast it in a variety of materials to see how much can be expressed through the materials.

“Seated Male Nude”

Ceramic

10” x 8” x 8”

2025

This is a small study done from memory.

I liked it quite a bit so I decided to make larger versions of it. Ultimately I would like to make one larger than life size. But to do that I need to consider 2 important things. First, there is the engineering of making a large ceramic piece that is hollow so that it can be fired. Clay more than about 2” thick will not fire properly. However, wet clay can not support much weight which means the piece has to be built up slowly so that the lower portions are dry enough not to collapse under the weight of the piece as it increases in size.

This first challenge is related to the second challenge of enlarging the piece. Once the lower portions of the piece are dry enough to add additional weight it becomes increasingly difficult to make adjustments. Therefore the lowest portions of the piece must be absolutely correct and have some of the fresh aspect of manipulating the wet clay that makes the sketch so vibrant.

I want my large piece to have the same quality of fresh expressionist gesture in the clay as this small sketch. So, I decided to do a series of pieces each one a step up from size of this one. Each one is roughly twice the size of the preceding one.

Additionally, many of the anatomical inaccuracies are not apparent in the small sketch but will become increasingly clear with each enlargement.

This piece does not need to be anatomically correct in detail. But it does need to not have any glaringly incorrect parts. At every scale it should look right even if the details are still not there. This is not intended to be realistic. The details are subdued intentionally to call more attention to the thrust and energy of the figure and the beauty of the material.

“Seated Man with Raised Arm”
Ceramic
20” x 10” x 10”
2025

This was created with minimal effort. When I go get clay it is arranged in stacks of 3’ long pugged square “logs” of clay roughly 7” x7”. The logs often stick together under their own weight and because clay is inherently sticky. So I need to dig in with my hands and pry a length out. I then hoist it back to my work area and plop it on my bench. Once in a while it inadvertently forms a powerful figure. All I need to do is pinch a little off here and add a little there. Maybe twist a little and pull a bit.

This process seems to work best with clay that has sat for a day or two. When it is first pugged the clay is too soft and creamy. After it has set for a day or two it starts to harden a bit. The result is that it clumps more and tears apart in a much greater variety of textures and shapes. It also compresses in more complex ways. When you grab it in this condition your hand doesn’t simply plunge straight in as it would on the first day. It resists and forces your hand to move laterally as well as to descend into the body of the clay. And that is how a piece like this ends up looking a bit like a figure being pulled from the earth rather than being extruded from a soft ice cream dispenser.

“A Hand”
Ceramic. Unpainted and painted.
20” x 8” x 8”
2025

These were originally intended to be actual pieces that I would have glued onto the arms and shoulders of a figure that was to be deliberately made of pieces. Somewhere along the way I abandoned that project and turned these hands into standalone table sculptures. And after shooting them, I decided to spray paint them black, with a mixture of flat and glossy finishes.

“3 Pieces of Legs and Feet”

Ceramic

36” x 15” x 15”

2025

Since I did not have the tools or materials at my disposal to build an armature, I decided to make my life size standing male figure in pieces. And while I made some attempt to have the pieces match in scale and design, I decided from the beginning to have it be unabashedly about separate pieces stacked to form a figure.

The bottom piece which is the feet and ankles are a worthy piece of art on their own. And I include a photo here of the piece by itself. But it is my intention that it be part of this larger 3 piece set.

“Caryatid”

Ceramic

20” x 8” x 8”

2025

You can kind of see it more easily in the first photo … the caryatid. You have to look for it a bit. You see the bent torso shouldering the load, muscles straining under the invisible weight. Sure…there it is…just like a marble carving from Ancient Greece. But unlike a true “aha” piece where there is really nothing to see beyond the “aha” moment, seeing the caryatid is only the beginning.

What I hope you will find worth spending some time on is the raw elegance of the brick like clay and the fact that the figure looks like it was just barely formed from clods of dirt. And I hope you’ll notice how vibrant the clay body is in places and where ash from the wood fired kiln creates bone like grey tones. The figure itself has power in its volumes and pose as well. There is restless energy there and strength even under pressure.

Caryatids were pillars in building that were carved into human forms by ancient Greeks. They were usually women. But in the 19th century artists like Rodin explored the idea of figures bearing a heavy weight as stand alone sculptures, not as architectural elements. The weight is no longer the weight of the building but functions like a metaphor for one’s own personal inner burdens. This just seems like a subject ripe to be explored more.

“Seated Study”

Ceramic

18” x 6” x 6”

2025

“Figure Study”
Unfired clay
14” x 14” x 14”
2025

I am back at my little studio in a corner of a ceramic factory in northern Thailand. This is my 3rd trip here and this time I actually have a little shelter and lights. So I can work at night.

My goal upon arrival was to squeeze out a bunch of figure studies that have been in my mind for awhile. And this time I was determined to leave them in a raw condition rather than trying to smooth them out and define details.

The clay here is in 2 distinct conditions. When it is first plugged it is light and frothy. It is actually very much like premixed cake frosting. It has very little compression strength and very little tinsel strength. That means t easily collapses under its own weight and will not hold up anything sticking out like an arm or even a head if it is tilted even a little.

Its 2 virtues are that it is very easy to manipulate and it is very sticky. So, it is a perfect 3 dimensional sketching material for small studies.

And that is what this piece is made of. I am not sure how well it will fire. It is quite fragile and may simply be reduced to rubble in the kiln. What you see featured here is a photograph of this piece shortly after I created it. If there is anything worth photographing after the firing I will add it here.

By the way, pugging is a process of squeezing water out of clay and in the process reducing it to a consistent and ideally smooth substance. This is done with a primitive tool that looks like a large soft ice cream dispenser. A large cylindrical screw pushes the wet clay through a tube and extrudes a never ending flow of soft clay that looks like a giant turd. Usually someone cuts of the “turd” in consistent lengths and sets them aside. Then, these “turd” are fed back into the pug machine hopper to be plugged a second time for a firmer and sturdier clay body suitable for making large pots … and sculptures.

“Study for a Sleeper”
Ceramic
12” x 12” x 12”
2025