Kathleen Skirvin

Passing

Modeling Clay and Artificial Hair

For this assignment, I was very interested in how the body endures change at different moments in life, especially death. I wanted to represent this human face at the dividing moment between existence and non-existence. I researched different acts that the body does when dying. For example, a slumped head, the jaw completely dropped, and the blood drained from the surface of the face. I made the head smaller than usual and the hair more abundant than usual to make the viewer wonder whether this sculpture is actually human or not. It has the physiognomy of a human face, but lacks the correct anatomical structure of a human head. The moment someone takes the last breath an ceases to be was what I was trying to convey in this piece.