Art Block: “The Maker of Chain” Metaphor

In the art community, every artist is familiar with the term art block. An art block is when an artist’s creativity is mentally stalled for a period, ranging from an hour to years. According to Lea Greenwood from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, art blocks occur from common reasons such as fear of imperfection, abundance of ideas, incubating ideas and depression. It is the ultimate containment of an artist’s creativity.

For this series of 3-D artworks, I was inspired and chose a science fiction story written by Dmatix titled SCP-1770 or “The Maker of Chains.” I chose “The Maker of Chains” as the main subject of the series, because it serves as a metaphor for art block. The story is about a humanoid figure made up of steel chains. According to its description, the figure has an apathetic nature and alleviating SCP-1770’s apathy are works of art depicting nature scenes, abstractions or inanimate objects. I used a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Dimensions to present the subject in a vast abstract environment in a 3-D plane.

 This 3-D series represents the feeling of having no artistic stimulation. It expresses how artists’ creative ideas are floating around and blurred with no color. It also shows how an art block affects the self-doubt in artists’ vision. “The Maker of Chains” understands how one feels in this state of mind.