GOLDEN EAGLE by avatar sculptor Cheen Pitney showed up soaring over the Brooklyn is Watching parcel two days ago.

Check his website for additional images. I have a lot of discussions with non-art people about “what is art” and for most folks it boils down to “stuff that is hard to do”.

This eagle clearly, was very hard to make, and as far as craftsmanship its impressive to me. Other SL sculptors out there, what do you think? Go see it fast before it auto returns, and Cheen, if you’re reading this– post up a comment to this post that tells people the SLURL of a place to see it after it is gone from BIW.

For me becoming a master at an existing style takes hard work and years of practice, but not courage, which is sometimes harder. The eagle is in a traditional style, traditional subject matter for monumental, representational sculpture, even the pose is something you’d expect to see on flag pole or on top of a neo-classical government building. in Is it fair to say this eagle falls into a “traditional” category when its not made in bronze but out of ones and zeros and the techniques used to make it have existed for only a short time, not centuries? I will say that when i first saw it I found it quite effecting. Do we consider it lesser than other works which use the medium (if the medium is SL) more completely by incorporating elements of interactivity and motion? Mr. Pitney has given us one work that does include some motion, and judging by the title a modern-art reference point rather than pre-modern.

Earth descending a staircase, refers to the famous painting by Marcel Duchamp and is interesting….. but i might like the eagle more…I’m not sure about the idea of the earth on a stair case… is it a joke… is it about global warming… it makes about as much sense as an eyeball with a hat.

What do y’all think? Go see it, and go look at Cheens other work.

Posted by jvanb on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 4:34 pm.