M.L. SNOWDEN ART
The Aquasphere
“Snowden’s bronze speaks the language of water.”
Miriam figures in the textual records of the Septuagint as one of the first historic women recorded to be associated with geologic water sources. The geological influence of water on the humanitarian sphere is explored in the Aquasphere through a series of sculptural meditations configuring Miriam in thin bas-relief, truncated portraiture, and full cantilevered bronze.
Water Mirror
Miriam Shelter of Moses
“Hailed by the Rodin scholar, Dr. Marie Busco, as ‘the millennial Mona Lisa’, lustrous bronze becomes a pool of water that reflects the profile of Miriam, Moses’s sister.
In this work, the properties of attenuated bronze are plumbed by the sculptor. Through deft handcraft, Snowden imbues this two hundred pound ultra-thin bas-relief panel with dichotomies of strength and fragility; qualities that seem to move
through passages of abstraction and figuration.
The work delivers optical nuances that suggest transiting emotions of resolve, care, pathos, and tenderness; along with a range of subtlties that can seem to change according to the viewer’s angle of perspective.
The glazed historic platinum Fournier patina of the work creates an almost dichroic sheen that promotes an optical illusion of further dimensionality on the basso relievo’s surface.
In this work, globally recognized as ‘Miriam Shelter of Moses,’ an abstract curvilinear ribbon rises above the portrait. Indeed, the abstract whorl is a further reflection that maps the route of the Nile
at the confluence where the infant Moses was placed on the river.”
Aquascape
Aquascape washes the liquid qualities of light over bronze. The delicate and subtle bronze of Aquascape creates a striking impression as an invention of Snowden’s response to recent scientific experiments where flowing beams of light exhibit dynamic properties similar to running water. In Snowden’s meditation, liquid water can take the shape of an enclosing vessel or it can take on the topographic conformations of a wetted form. Aquascape is the latter phenomenon, where Snowden conceptually reconfigures the shape of water as it runs over the facial planes of Miriam. In this bronze, metal describes and isolates the light-like copasetic sculptural properties of water.
Hydromene
Hydromene carves the emotion of Miriam at the parting of the Red Sea. Quiet reaction and confliction at the enormity of the miracle is etched upon this bronze that asserts its water-related character throughout its form, substance, and conceptual inspiration. Indeed, Hydromene is a term coined by the sculptor to refer to a water-based entity; a concept that comes alive in the corals, kelp, and other sea forms that clothe Miriam’s compositional truncation, enhancing the work’s sense of reverie. Following a central meditation on the interrelationship of water throughout creation and viewing it as a component of human and metallic substance, Snowden has commemorated the deciphering of water-based BRCA 1 and 2 cancer controlling genetic codes by inscribing them into the folds of Hydromene’s bronze.
Water Source
Water Source spins in mid-flight joy. Indeed, water’s integral importance to the maintenance of humankind is reflected in Miriam’s ecstatic dance on discovering water wells in the desert; a feat which saved the Israelites from destruction. Snowden cantilevers Miriam’s quarter-ton bronze into a flurry of pivoting motion, underscoring the biologic and sociologic affirmation of humankind’s central relationship with water
Aquascape II
Aquascape II jets water over the shape of laughter. Here bronze becomes a stream of water over the smiling face of Miriam, preserving an illusive emotion generated on the discovery of water in an inhospitable environment. The thin cusp of bronze shaping the work gives insight into Snowden’s calibration of bronze wall thickness which determines the heat of the bronze pour as well as the acidic water-based bloom of the historic Fournier patina on Aquascape II’s heated surface.