Family ter Laak

Statues from the trilogy

Madelief ter Braak

Portrait of my niece when she was a two-year old toddler.

I made this child portrait in river clay and then I had it casted in bronze. After that I patinated the portrait myself with copper nitrate and sulfur.

Boy from Chicago (1910)

In 2012, I visited a beautiful exhibition about the work of the American photographer Lewis Hine in the Dutch Photomuseum. I was deeply touched by the photo of a little boy who lived in the Chicago slums around 1910 (photo above). Lewis Hines immortalized him on celluloid, I did the same in clay!

The bust that I made of this young boy was baked with chamotte clay and then painted with angobe.