Lady Artisan: Chac, the Maya Rain God

Chac, the Maya Rain God

This figure is LARGE for me. He's a 20" figure, 22" tall with the base. He's definitely a work in progress, being made from air-dry clay, which I'm not used to working with. I was initially doing him for a Houston art doll show but the show was cancelled. This turned out to be fortunate for me since I ran into a snag--I overdid the muscles on his lower back, inadvertently giving him scoliosis. LOL. The idea is to somehow sand down those overgrown muscles and redo them with a little constraint. I got a bit overzealous when I decided to use Katherine Dewey's "heroic" figure as my guide--but look at that six-pack.

What I visualize is my Chac figure materializing out of the stela, as if called into being by someone. The particular stela I was copying are at least twice the height of a person, so don't ask me what scale this will be when I'm done (maybe I'll try to figure it out once I have the piece closer to finished). My plan is to use lanscaping to cover the base and make the stela look a bit overgrown--and to give the viewer a better concept of the scale. This Chac is supposed to be massive, larger than life, etc. It is a god, after all.