Garden gnome

Last year, for our SIA and the Nanyang ‘A Green Dot’ exhibition, we created modern garden gnomes in groups. For my group, we came up with the concept of a teenage gnome, thus it is dressed in a red Billabong hoodie and jeans. The sneakers look quite worn out though. If you look close enough, he is holding a green ipod without headphones. 

I realised that with a good foundation, it is easier to accessorize a sculpture with the clothes and everything… therefore we spent quite a long time working on the base (a cylindrical clay pot). Another challenge is the fact that we have to make our gnome three dimensional, unlike the conceptual drawings we did. Thus we had to constantly ensure that it looks proportionate and well made all round. This gnome is one of the largest sculpture project I worked on and it was real enjoyable to work with my teammates and mess around with clay rather than usual 2D media.

The gnome was exhibited at SMU with his fellow gnomes, before moving to his permanent resting place on the 3rd level of the staffroom block.