Specs

• Value: €4.500
• Material: Recycled Cardboard (recovered from the streets of Bologna)
• Dimension: 35cm x 38cm x 20cm
• Months: 1
• Hours: 45
• Title: The Wind that Loved the Girl
• Description: A small cardboard statue (semi-bust) of a woman’s head and shoulders looking to the side with her wind tangled in the air.
• Series: Second Chances (10 of 10)

About the Piece

This was the tenth piece created by Chad in his studio at Alchemilla during the early summer of 2022,  and was presented at the Lucca Biennale 2022. Like all the material for this project, every cardboard box recovered from the streets of Bologna has a story and a previous life — abandoned and given a second chance (Learn more about the philosophy of the material for this series). The subject of this sculpture is actually the wind itself, and the girl is simply the object of his affection.

This was the first life sized sculpture created by Chad as a direct portrait of someone in particular, which required a lot more care to represent the features accurately. Chad chose to utilize torn cardboard pieces that were rough and textured, which gives this piece a much more unfinished look. But still in this messiness there is enough detail in the right places to provide the imagination enough context to fill in the details. This is intended to mimic the loose but compelling style of oil painters such as John Singer Sargent.

Chad continued to use razor cutting as a way to sculpt the most important features in a traditional sculpting style. This sculpture incorporates the important element of "motion" through the representation of the hair. The material remains an important part of all these pieces, so it's important that many parts remain "unfinished" to give the viewer the moment of surprise when they realize what the sculpture is made of and let them guess the meaning behind it.