"Sol"
60x60cm Leather on wood. Wall hanging.
Mario Sanchez 2022
Sol is a tribute to the Sun. I was having a bit of fun with this work, where I wanted to anthropomorphise plants and wondered who they would worship. When you look at the structure of plants it is hard to not think they are well organised as if they had some social structure much like insects or ourselves. I arranged the leaves in a way that resembles the way they appear in the natural world but purposely categorised their colour and sizes in a way that is very familiar to us. I wanted to give them a sense of hirarchy, self importance as if they were worshipping their lifegiver - The Sun. In a way they are not leaves any more, but people. But they were never leaves anyway, they are leather.
There are over 250 leather leaves in this piece with a plaster cast of a polymer clay Sun-eye in the center.