Finished

This is what I was working on in my last post. It is a piece I created for Party With A Purpose and the Washington State University Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health. The inspiration behind it is WSU's rabies vaccination campaigns in Tanzania. 23,700 people in Africa and 31,500 people in Asia die a year from rabies, most of these people are children. By vaccinating dogs it prevents humans from contracting and dying from rabies. When I was developing an idea for the piece they gave me these wonderful photos of people coming to the clinics to have their dogs vaccinated. People travel long distances to take advantage of the vaccinations and transport their dogs any way they can. My favorite was a photo of a bunch of puppies in a backpack. They're also in bike baskets, carried over shoulders, and just plain leashed. The love people had for their pets became clear and I wanted my piece to focus on that rather than the disease itself. While at the Party I presented my piece with people from WSU's School for Global Animal Heath to party goers and hopefully raised some awareness.

PS: The photos aren't great quality because I vastly underestimated how much time sculpting the figures would take and barely made my deadline. I shot these and then had  to run off to display it. It was a busy day!