Back in March, Ken over at Hi-Fructose wrote about Scott Hove and his unique creations. At first it’s a little difficult to understand what these pieces are made from. Once you do, the struggle is to understand why anyone would do this. About midway through looking at the steps involved it dawned on me that even though the final product is foam, wood, and plastic with colored sugar loaded on top of it the process really isn’t that different from normal sculpting or carving.
Scott uses a wood rasp to shave the foam and a Japanese wood carving knife to make the design in it. The whole piece is mounted on a board and then the less hardy materials start to come into play. He loads it up with all manner of the standard foo-foo stuff like chocolate paint, frosting, cherries and coyote teeth.
It’s really amazing how one little set of acrylic coyote teeth makes what would be a rather frilly sculpture a lot more interesting.
Many of the tools and even the process are largely the same as a guy carving a duck decoy in the shop. There’s shaping, shaving, and design in both, and from our standpoint, Scott’s work is just a different type of finish — with a giant Barbie head underneath. Nothing odd about that really.
Behind the Scenes with Scott Hove [Via Hi-Fructose]