This is the first of five heads. They were a breakthrough in my work and were a challenge to make, in every respect, from the work in plaster to their final realization in stainless steel. In plaster the armature had to be so delicate in order to fit the given thickness—barely 2 inches—of the profile and yet strong enough to make the profile stand straight. The hood is hollow, reminiscent of a bell—famously hard to cast.

It was an engineering challenge and a challenge to cast in metal as well. The inner profile can be turned from side to side, but the sculpture is not intended as a toy. Movement is not so much for playing as for giving the sculpture a psychological dimension by the possibility of changing its expression.

I feel these Heads are a success, among other reasons, because the idea has been realized in its ideal size. In some cases, I have small sculptures that I wish I could make big for them to come into their own.

Many ideas came from these heads. You can see the development of the idea of negative space in the negative profiles of Arch I and Arch II as well as in the negative profile in Running Head. The first expression of this negative profile is in Head IV.

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