Anthro for My Grave!

Hi Guys!

It's Andrew the Bee again and I'm here to lay some art and philosophy on you!  See, I was doin' some thinking and it struck me that sooner or later, we're all gonna kiss this world goodbye!  Now that's nothin' to be sad about; in fact, if you've got the right mindset, it's actually pretty cool!  We're all goin' places and death is as much the beginning as it is the end!

Anyhow, I wanted to make sure that people knew that when they came to weep at my grave!  So I asked a friend of mine, a real artist, to make a bronze plaque to stick on my tombstone! Of course she didn't exactly know what was on my mind, so I gave her some pictures and a few written instructions!

I started with this:

Burney Relief, Isin-Larsa or Old Babylon, c. 1800 b.c., British Museum

In case you're wondering, that's an Old Babylonian clay tablet.  The lady with the bird feet and wings is probably Inanna or maybe Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld.  In any case, she can fly, so I'm sure she gets around!  With this sculpture in mind, I whipped up a sketch:

Sketch for Bronze Roundel Design, Andrew the Bee, 2013

As you can see, I changed a few things!  The lady isn't exactly a goddess now; instead she's a psychopomp!  OK, I know what you're thinking...  "a psycho-what??"  Well, that's just fancy talk to say that she's kind of like an angel that helps you to find the right platform so you can catch your next train!  She's holding up her right hand in a Hindu gesture that means "fear not!"  And with her left hand she's using a "bless you" gesture that you can see in old pictures of saints!  The crescent moon shows that life and death go in cycles and the butterfly stands for the soul!  Hmm.  Maybe I should have made that a bee, but it's too late now!

OK, so I gave this stuff to the artist, who modeled a roundel in clay and then made a plaster cast.  Here it is:

Bas-Relief Roundel in Plaster, Jennifer Frudakis-Petry, 2014

Cool, huh?  This cast then became the starting point for the final version in bronze.  I won't bore you with all of the technical details that are involved in that process, but let me just say that it's complicated!  You've got not only the artist working on the piece, but also a bunch of guys at the foundry!  I never realized it before, but it takes a village to make a sculpture in bronze!

Bas-relief Roundel in Bronze, Jennifer Frudakis-Petry, 2014

Voila!  The finished product!  When I croak, I'm gonna have 'em bolt it to my headstone in whatever cemetery they plant me in!  And if anybody comes to see me, they won't cry -- They'll feel good!  After a while, people will stop coming and this plaque will turn green and stain the hell out of the granite.  But when that granite finally crumbles, this plaque will still be there!  And when someone picks it up, they'll still feel good!  Sure, everything changes, but nothing ever dies!

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