Brandon Cole
Stewartville High School
Many of you know that some of the things we humans do on this planet corrupt the source of fresh water such as littering, carless dumping of hazardous chemicals, junk yards, vehicle exhaust leaks, factory drainage systems so on and so forth. I have constructed a sculpture to illustrate just how important water is to our existence. This sculpture is composed of clay, a fiberglass globe, river rock and even a water pump. I constructed this piece by making plaster molds of my arms and face. The pot was free-hand built using various techniques. After nearly 7 months of work and parts of the sculpture breaking numerous times, I am pleased to say it is complete and looks the way I had envisioned it to be from day one. The colors I chose for this sculpture symbolize the foundation of life. I chose a mossy green for the pot to represent land and vegetation, and a rusty brown for the arms and face to represent soil because soil is the foundation for everything that you see today on earth.
There are many positive things that we have done in society, but there are negative things as well such as pollution and waste. There are two ways to view this sculpture, as the water rolls off the globe you will notice that there is a face emerging from the pot illustrating that water truly is the foundation for life. As water continues to flow from the globe it creates an illusion of a person being generated and unveiled from the pot as if the constant replenishment of water builds this life. Now if you were to view the arms squeezing the globe it illustrates our demand for fresh water and how we can take advantage of the one thing that provides the gift of life. Increasing our global water supply can be as easy as shutting off the water faucet while brushing our teeth or taking a short shower, investing in more water efficient appliances or even regulating our crop irrigation systems. So, as you see, the little things add up, but a large majority of our world’s population has to participate. So do your part to reduce your water consumption.