David's Inspiration
"Barack Obama was hard to
sculpt. He's a really good looking guy and he's the president and that GQ look
is always hard to do. You don't know what facial feature to go after, so I
just went after his ears and teeth. I just wanted to make it look
like him and make it a caricature. I looked at a lot of other caricatures of
him and with so many you missed that it was even Obama. Obama was a
commissioned piece, along with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. The Weekly Standard
magazine wanted the sculptures to make "stress heads'' out of
them.
Joe Biden was much
easier to sculpt than President Obama - he's pointy, his nose comes to a
real point. It is harder to get pointy things out of the mold and thin
things don't dry as fast as others, so the sculpture was a little
complicated. Even though these "State of the Union''
sculptures are small, there is a lot of work that goes into them. I start
wtih clay and make a finished bust, sand it and fine tune it. It goes to a
mold maker and he makes a mold of it, then pours resin into the mold. It comes
out almost a complete sculpture that I carve and paint.
Nancy Pelosi has
a reputation of being high energy and that's what I tried to make her face -
high energy. Her face is also very tight (I think she and Joe Biden are both a
little botoxed.) She wears that same kind of business outfit with pearls just
about every time you see her. Whether you love her or hate her, I think the
sculpture captures her personality.''