The Giza Sphinx Revisited

I have an eclectic clutter of “natural materials” on my work bench most of the time. I usually shift things around, look at them from different angle and see if there is a message I can transform into a new work piece.

Here is how my work bench looked last week – a taxidermied head of an Arizona giant hare, the lower jaw of an elk, deer antler, hare tail and squirrel tail. I even tried to figure out what to do with the loose front teeth of the elk jaw….

At some point, I saw a new perspective to the Egyptian Sphinx … Indeed the proportions of the hare head and the elk jaw seemed to match those of the Sphinx (non-copy write photo from https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/egypt/egca15e.html )

While the Giza Sphinx has a human head and a lion’s body, my smaller scale one has a hare head and an elk’s jaw for body. But, to give it an anthropomorphic touch, I added a blue bow tie to the hare’s neck!

It may be seen as a silly exercise, but the knowledge one has about things, no matter how seemingly unrelated or uncommonly thought in tandem, is what makes ones perspective unique. Eventually, art is a way to look at the ordinary in an extra-ordinary way. It is to link dots when many do not even see dots.

Here is an illustration of how finding angles can change the character of the observed:

January 5, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019