M.L. SNOWDEN SCULPTURE
THE GEOLOGICAL COREIUM - STORM TRILOGY

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Ion, along with Rainpillar and Windscarf, explores humankind’s essential relationship with the cycles, energy patterns and geophysics of earth’s atmosphere.

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Ion defined by geophysics, is an electrically charged atom; it is one of the radicals formed most notably in earth’s atmosphere by the action of electricity or cosmic radiation causing atoms to either gain or lose electrons. Ion unfurls as the portrait of a positively charged particle.

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In this sculptural incantation, M.L. Snowden builds upon the ultimate evocation of the positive particle when it is first created. An intensely gestural work, Ion’s hands are open and receptive not only to the new gravity of its atomic structure but to the conceptual freedom of new ventures. In Ion’s dramatic silhouette, it is possible to trace the sculpture as it enlarges its meditation to embrace the sweeping cosmic maps of electrical currents witnessed throughout creation: the path of lightning; the trails of comets; or the ray of energy blazed by an internal human mental thought made visible as it floats and grooves actual tissue like a metal thread. A closed electrical circuit is suggested in fractal planes forming the abstraction of Ion.

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A notable engineering accomplishment, Ion has been sculpted by Snowden into new levels of metallurgical balance. Ion’s substantial weight effortlessly suspends along Snowden’s mathematical enhancement of what is possible to be achieved in the science and art of contemporary lost wax bronze. M.L. Snowden invented the protocols and specific foundry wax that makes the casting of Ion possible.

Ultimately for the sculptor, Ion is a seminal work that experiments with a groundbreaking weighted structural wall support calculation. In Ion, each specific element of the anatomical figuration is defined as if charged with an electrical cathode that maximizes every nuance and tendon yet supports the figure in effortless grace and flotation.

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From important roots in the Paris studios of Rodin and Antonin Mercié, Snowden brings to Ion, the luminous platinum Fourner Patina and the touch of the Rodin tools that were used to define the exquisite anatomical passages of Ion.

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Such is the message of Ion - it is sculpture based on the artist’s theoretical meditation that the trajectory of a positively charged Ion is deeply related to the electrical map of human thought and other expressions of universal cosmic energy. In the sculptor’s conception, the highest plane of human cerebral mentation first extends out in an energy arc much like an extended finger or figure, that when established, tends to form upon orbits of self contained energy systems. For the sculptor, Ion is a wand of human questing; the grace and drive of the soul expressed as transcendent energy.