Beautiful Monster

Beautiful Monster ©Claire Passmore 2022

Beautiful Monster is the new 3D sculpture I recently finished and was a lot of fun to make. It measures 16" x 23.5" x 23.5" (40cm x 60cm x 60cm)
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​Everything on the island of Mauritius seems to grow to enormous proportions, even the snails are enormous! The fertile volcanic soil, the plentiful rains and the clean, unpolluted air provide the perfect environment for everything to grow and grow. This beautiful monster is an interpretation of the Monstera plant that is taking over my garden.
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Made from layers of painted heavyweight interfacing that are stitched together then cut into large leaf shapes. The holey leave are such nice shapes to work with and seem to curve naturally.  The support is made from a metal frame which is wrapped with hemp cord. 

Large pieces of interfacing were painted with diluted acrylic paint. Yellow, blue and black paint in varying quantities give all kinds of shades of green. A little red added to the mix provided some nice variation and depth. On the underside of the leaves I decided to add a little luxury, so covered the surface with gold leaf. It was a very messy process, but adds just a hint of a warm glow to the reflected light. I like it!
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I hand stitched the leaves with a combination of perle thread, stranded embroidery cotton and also added some free motion stitched embroidery in a delicate lacy pattern over part of the surface. 

The individual leaves slide onto the support and can be positioned in many ways so as to give quite a lot of variation. Here are a few more views.

Thanks for reading!