Chaplin
Materials Resin painted cut-out aluminum (2 and 3 layers thick), sandblasted glass, and cast glass
Support: color through brilliant white formica over plywood
Charlie Chaplin was a British actor, filmmaker, and composer. He began as a stage actor and came to America with a theatre company in 1908 at the age of 19. At this time, he discovered the earliest silent films and was swept into excitement of this era. Ten years later he founded United Artists Studio and distribution company with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D.W. Griffith offering him complete autonomy with his projects.
Several of Chaplin’s films, “The Gold Rush”, “City Lights”, “Modern Times”, and “The Great Dictator”, are considered some of the greatest films of all times.
In my sculpture the images in each frame are from some of these iconic films and the images of Chaplin himself are as the Little Tramp and as he appeared off screen. The music is the theme from the song “Smile”, written for the film “Modern Times” and made famous by Nat King Cole. Chaplin was a prodigious composer and wrote the scores of all of his films even the piano scores to be played with the silent films.