Inspiration

Alien Abduction

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Every dragon needs a way in.

Alien Abduction is my second dragon sculpture, and it started life as a bit of fun — no grand plan, just an idea I wanted to see take shape. The original concept was simple: a dragon caught in the act of stealing a large egg.

Simple, that is, until I actually had to build it. The dragon grips the sphere in its claws, as if caught mid-flight, making off with its prize. I didn't want the claws welded to the sphere — I wanted it to look like the dragon was just about to grab it, claws poised rather than fixed in place. So it's bolted from the inside instead, with bolts running up inside the legs where they can't be seen. But that meant the sphere still needed an access port — a way to get inside and join the pieces together. The trouble was, I didn't want anything that looked like an access port. No hatch, no seam, no obvious give-away that would break the illusion.

I sat with that problem for a while. Then, one evening down the pub, it clicked: what if the "egg" wasn't an egg at all? What if something was trying to get out of it?

That's how the piece became Alien Abduction — a pod, cracked open from the inside, with an alien poking its head out looking every bit as confused about the situation as you'd expect. What began as an awkward engineering problem turned into the whole personality of the piece, and honestly, it's a better sculpture for it.

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Interested in Alien Abduction, or curious about commissioning something similarly unexpected? Please get in touch

Size

 1.5m x 1.1m x 1.1m
 

In Motion

The dragon rocks gently back and forth in the wind