Cytoblast

Cytoblast is a dimensional essay of energy. Within its eroded, exploded, extruded and compressed planes, the sculpture stands as a description of radiant nucleic activity. Through organic shape and metaphor, the sculpture conceptualizes not only the radiant core of stars, but the energy of cells and speaks to that germinal and active point where cellular development takes place. Within an imaginative sphere, the sculpture creates a locale that is the physical embodiment of creation. At its most profound level, the bronze stands as a metaphor for the concept of directed energy immersed in shaping substance.
Sculpted in clay within five hours on May 1, 2009 and subsequently cast into bronze, Cytoblast is a first phase commemoration of the millennial stem cell. Created within the first decade of the new era, Cytoblast is immediately historic in evoking a scientific research milestone and joins Snowden’s Helix X and Y that commemorates the completion of the mapping of the human genome. In Cytoblast (Creation), a divergent approach to timelessness is achieved through heroically scaled elements that evoke a seven foot monument in just two feet of height. Compact yet larger than life, the sculpture evokes a sense of dream-like possibility in giving rise to disparate elements. Cytoblast’s sculptural composition suggests that while elemental parts may be developed from cells along exclusive and discreet lines, all matter and substance is joined in often surprising synergies and harmonies. Within the sculpture’s composition, a sense of anticipation in the absence of supporting bronze is achieved through metallurgical engineering that creates a sense of floatation. The sculpture based upon positive and negative matter, suggests the discoverable nature of physicality and the quest of science to define the unknown through logic, method and creative imagination.
Cytoblast as a sculptural meditation expresses M.L. Snowden’s central idea that the very substance of humankind, stars, planetary masses and bronze are created of the same interrelated yet differently arranged elements. Tools number 7 and 8 from the sculptor’s collection of the Rodin tools were used to incise Cytoblast’s imaginative planes without reference to models, shaping the sculpture’s almost cloud-like sense of radiance. The historic Fournier patina inherited from the Rodin Studios creates a platinum glaze that under certain light sources, heightens Cytoblast’s monumental fragments into glowing clusters of crystal, massive chrysanthemum petals, abstract loops and other imaginative cognates of form. Through dramatically opposed obverse and reverse vantage points of the bronze, the sculptor has drawn an energetic and schematic map of process and development not only for cells and stars but for the process of sculpture, where within the closed sphere of the composition, actions and reactions of energy create self-nurturing platforms for energetic and structural advancement.