Specs

• Value: €3.500 (SOLD)
• Material: Recycled Cardboard (recovered from the streets of Bologna)
• Dimension: 52cm x 36cm x 20cm
• Months: 1
• Hours: 45
• Title: You Are Enough
• Description: A small cardboard statue of a nude woman standing in a pose with one leg in front of the other, reaching forward toward the future, with a raven sitting in her right hand held to the side and 3 sparrows flying above carrying her hair.
• Series: Second Chances (#8)

About the Piece

This piece is on display at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca (a bank in Lucca, Italy). It was the eight piece created by Chad in his studio in Bologna in the spring 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, The concept for this piece was imagined for the Lucca Biennale (theme "White Page"), Chad was invited outside of the normal call for artists, to participate in a month long residence to realize a large sculpture for the festival that would remain permanently exhibited in the city. In the end, scheduling conflicts prevented Chad from participating, but this miniature piece, along with 6 others, were sent to the festival to be on display for 2 months. Like other pieces in this series it represents the creative process of reusing the material of the past to create a new life. (Learn more about the philosophy of the material for this series.)

This is definitely the most classically "symbolic" sculpture of the series. The woman in this sculpture represents the intersection of the past and the future, a magical place full of possibilities called the present. The raven in her right hand is the wisdom that guides her from past experience. The sparrows are her courage, curiosity, and creativity that give her the power to live every day and confront the future, which is both beautiful and scary. With eyes full of wonder, she extends her hand to gently tame the future.

This was the second miniature sculpture created by Chad after the massive 4 meter sculpture he finished immediately before. The goal with these small sculptures was to allow the public to engage with the same material and themes, but in a surprising way where they are forced to stoop down and interact at a different scale and perspective. In particular when this sculpture is juxtaposed with the largest sculpture, each can be appreciated in new ways.

This small scale created new artistic and technical challenges, but the process remained largely the same. Chad continued to use razor cutting as a way to carefully shape and draw attention to the hands and face. He also continued to incorporate elements of motion to draw the viewer from the static features to the more dynamic hair and birds of the scene. 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.