M.L. SNOWDEN SCULPTURE
THE TERRESTRIAL FORUM

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Cataclasis Study forms the central matrix of M.L. Snowden’s landmark conception for the monumental forces and energies choreographed in the GEOLOGICAL COREIUM. Within the ever expanding chapter of the TERRESTRIAL FORUM, Cataclasis Study is followed by the full scale Cataclasis Latent, Active and Emerging Energy Fragments which join the geological explorations of Verdura (Organogenesis); Genesis (Orogenesis); Tectonics; Tectonics Element :Europe; the five works of the Amethyst Geode Arcelleon; Rhexodus (Rhexistasy) as well as the studio and monumental civic plaza scales of Igneous Shield Protectite.

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Cataclasis Study is an exploration of the monumental forces and energies that shape rock and mold the Earth’s surface. As a historic and seminal work, in 1992, Cataclasis Study won the world’s greatest sculpture prize, The International Rodin Competition in Tokyo, Japan, hosted by the embassies of Italy, France, Sweden, Germany, the United States and thirty two other countries. Cataclasis Study was purchased for the permanent collection of the Hakone-Open-Air Museum in Japan, the World’s foremost sculpture garden.

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Cataclasis Study presents three essential states of energy: the Latent, the Active and the Emerging. M.L. Snowden, in concert with contemporary geological science, increasingly sees the Earth as a living organism with its rock and soil structures following the same aging patterns as biological life forms. Yet in Cataclasis Study, M.L. Snowden divests the sculpture of any particular traditional age depiction, evoking instead, deep seated energy positions communicated through massively drawn, naturally occurring figuration. Here in this small scale study, the macrocosm of planetary energy is conveyed in all its weight and grandeur in microcosm.

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Cataclasis Study is an exploration that established for Snowden, a dialogue with the energies existing in the Earth materials of natural clay and bronze. A seminal sculpture, Cataclasis Study defined the sculptor’s role as being part of an extended energy catalyst that realizes figuration as an inevitable result of manually compressing clay. As Snowden has observed, compressed clay and the cooling cores of molten bronze naturally want to warp to the musculature of man rather than the geometries of architecture. Within this larger vision, humankind is seen as the summary of earthly creative forces.

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From important roots in the Paris studios of Auguste Rodin and Antonin Mercié, Snowden brings to Cataclasis Study, the historic luminous platinum Fournier Patina and the touch of the Rodin tools that were used to shape the profound subtleties of the sculpture.

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Such is the message of Cataclasis Study - within the geological fabric of the cosmos evoked in Snowden’s artistic vision of the GEOLOGICAL CORIEUM, humankind reverberates and expresses the heart of energies that create our Earth and universe.