ÜGLY
Le dernier de sa race: a mass of found wood ending in an upright point, a dark metal block set at its top, carried by a rippling forged-metal blade planted in a concrete block strewn with white pebbles, studio backdrop, work by Robert Bibeau

The Last of His Kind

Carving this block of found wood, the artist uncovered an axe head the living tree had swallowed: the blade had gone in, and the fibres closed over it year after year. That find decided the rest. The form reads as a bull, raised above a metre and a half on a forged metal rod snaking up from a concrete base; two uneven stubs stand for horns, one torn away, one snapped. The rod keeps some give: a push of the hand sets the beast swaying before it settles back to plumb. The cuts stay raw. A beast that took the blow and still holds.

Le dernier de sa race: close view of the mass of found wood, a dark metal block wedged in a cleft below a pale length of wood rising diagonally, white background.
Le dernier de sa race: the whole sculpture seen from the front, a mass of found wood carried by a sinuous forged rod set into a concrete base strewn with white pebbles.
Le dernier de sa race: the sculpture seen whole, the broad flat face of the wood crossed by a dark iron below a pale point, the forged rod straight down to the concrete base.
Le dernier de sa race: the upper part alone against a pale ground, the wood block and its raised point above the S-curve of the metal rod.
Studio view, white background.
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Reading notes

No one drove this axe in: the wood had swallowed it, and the carving made it visible. The wounded bovine joins art's enduring beasts, from Picasso's bull to votive figures. One question stays open: does this last survivor stand by its own force, or because it was set there.