When I was younger, I was obsessed with watching YouTube videos on polymer clay sculptures. I especially loved the ones where they would sculpt an entire mini bakery or house. But when I got the assignment in my 3D design class that we were to create a sculpture of an animal, I was super nervous. I had not touched clay since I was in probably the second grade and the student examples that my professor showed were INCREDIBLE. A lot to live up to.

The first step to creating our animal sculptures was to come up with sketches. My sketches were inspired by the circus or a carnival. I drew over a dozen options from elephants to tigers to zebras, etc. The last sketch I drew, however, became the one I knew I wanted to create. A carousel horse!

After we settled on our final sketch, we created a base out of wire armature and SteelStik - the thing people use to repair cars. Once we had our base made out of wire, we attached aluminum foil to start building out the shape of the animal. Mine was a little tricky, since I wanted the pole to be going through the horse, like it was actually on a carousel. My professor gave me the advice to build them out of clay separately and put a hole through the body of the horse to put the pole through. I also knew I wanted the horse to be “floating” in the air without any of it’s hooves touching the base. My advice for this - use a LOT of SteelStik. When I was trying to get the horse to stay up, it was about 3am in the morning and I woke my boyfriend up to come hold it while I piled on the SteelStik. (Thanks babe.) After using up an entire tube of SteelStick on the base of the sculpture and top and bottom of the horse where the pole went through, it stayed up! My professor said she has never had anyone accomplish this before. Mentally patted myself on the back.

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