This is my ‘Studio Golem’. it “protects my back” and watches over my studio and me while I paint or have my back to the door or my painting studio.
I created this using a popcorn tin that my parents sent me as a Christmas present in 2011.
At the same time, In Egypt, Dictator Hosni Mubarak was slowly being overthrown via the Arab Spring movement. I created this originally thinking of a beheaded leader with a dunce cap, with a bunny on it, in that the leader feels innocent, thinks he is innocent…..
Around the same time, My wife and I saw the 1915 movie “Golem” (the Monster of Fate) at the Goethe Institut in Washington, DC. I was fascinated by the story and immediately set upon making my sculpture a ‘studio Golem’. The Golem, like me perhaps, is a lumbering creature which can’t be easily controlled. in a way, my studio Golem is a self portrait.
In Jewish folklore, a golem (/ˈɡoʊləm/ goh-ləm; Hebrew: גולם) is an animated anthropomorphic being, magically created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material (usually out of stone and clay) in Psalms and medieval writing.
some of the original 1915 footage:
