28/08/07. This sculpture, started in early July 2007, is 3/4 finished and shows some of my research in the background from archaeological texts. This piece is leather hard which enables me to carve the surface back like soft stone, but also to add more clay if I need to. This particular sculpture is hollow and formed from coils, but many of my originals are built solid to prevent the chances of carving through and leaving accidental holes. To the right of the larger sculpture is a smaller one I made earlier which is serving as a Marquette for this piece. The original archaeological piece is from Çatal Höyük, Turkey, is very small, and was unearthed in the early 1960's. There were many such figures found at that site, sometimes in clusters, particularly on hearths and in grain bins in each house.

       
The toes are carved out, but they need polishing until they are as smooth as the thigh above. The back still in progress; notice the use of mirrors and plumb lines to get the symmetry right. Slowly building up the fingers using small pieces of clay.

       
6/9/07 Because I am not convinced that the head of the original sculpture from Çatal Höyük is not a modern re-construction, (it is a different colour from the rest of the body and seems too wide for the neck joint upon which it rests), I am having to design a face to fit this body. Also, the original was very small, and there is only so much detail you can fit onto a small sculpture. For more detailed faces I have looked at other archaeological finds from this region, although sometimes of a later era. These have largely been 3,000BC Anatolian, Sumerian, Syrian and Iraq as well as other examples from Çatal Höyük and other ancient Turkish sites such as Hançilar. As the body is very naturalistic, I'm assuming the face and head would have been too, so I am also drawing on modern images of beautiful fat women and fusing aspects of all of them with the ancient sources. These include Queen T'hisha and April Miller from the book 'Women En Large' (see link page), 'Tiamat' by Max Hammond Dashu, and my own mental store of faces that have sunk into my subconscious over the years.

26/11/07 The upper arms have been thickened, the back made more realistic, and the neck re-positioned further back, so lifting the chin up. The face has been further remodelled; this is probably face number 15! and I still haven't decided what to do with her hair....   

30/11/07 But I have now. Most of the figures found at Çatal Höyük do not have their heads any more, but the few that do all seem to wear small caps. I haven't found any figures of women from that part of the world, in any era, that have entirely uncovered hair. The figure I am basing this piece on appears to have either the hair wrapped in some kind of spiral, or pulled back into a very small cap at the back of the head. Similar sculptures from Ançilar also wear very small caps at the back of the head. The picture on the right shows the beginning of the cap being carved out from the clay that was hair. 


 

2/12/07 The final face has emerged and the right hand side is mostly finished; just a matter now of getting the left hand side of the face to match, and to get it smoothly polished. The cap is 95% finished too. The ears have been re-positioned and made a little smaller. The eyes have lost their archaic stare in favour of a more natural look, in keeping with the naturalism of the rest of the figure. The original sculpture was only 8cm tall, and so there is a limit as to how much detail such a small sculpture could show. However, on a larger scale, it is more possible to have greater detail in the modelling, and more likely to have happened given the naturalism of these later Neolithic clay sculptures. I've given her the laughter lines of a mature woman as this Goddess represents bounty, benevolence and motherly love.

8/12/07    As I'm now at the smoothing and refining stage, (which can take months), I have to say a word of thanks to Terry Pratchett and Tony Robinson for helping keep me sane.  Without audio books I'd go quite bonkers, and there is only so much Radio 4 a person can take. A good story can help pace you when on a very long project like this, and help keep you going when working 7 days a week. On the right are some of the tools presently in use on this piece. They are mostly clay and paint shapers but there are some home made tools too. The garden sprayer is to stop her drying out.

To see examples of smaller 19cm high versions of this Çatal Höyük sculpture see the 'Small Goddesses' page.

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Photography by Lea Phillips, Ama Menec and Bethany Love.
Last edited on 24th July 2010.