The Sculptor of the Bizarre: Tom Kuebler

  About a year ago, browsing the web i ran into a picture (at the left) of Tom Kuebler's silicone sculpture Baba Yaga and i got instantly teleported to my childhood, dreading about that old scary lady living next door, drolling over chubby kids. As i was digging deeper in to the horrifying yet wonderful art of Thomas Kuebler, i got utterly overwhelmed by the tempest of stories carved deep into each sculpture. The characterization is simply epic. His sculptures are teeming with character to the point where their emotions become evident. Realism is beyond stunning, yet somehow subordinated to the pure and striking story. Seeing Baba Yaga alive would perhaps make me wanna hug her although she still terrifies me.

  At this point of reading, you are probably wandering why would anyone with such an enormous talent make something "ugly" and dreadful as this? Well, its simple. The princess is beautiful and her dress is beautiful too and thats it. On the other side, the caretaker of the crypt in the woods east of princess's castle is frightful, demoralizing, horrifying, disgusting, dismayful and ugly in so many ways that the king ordered to seal the crypt and burn the woods. The caretaker became burning zombie and ate them all eventually, which made me completely forget the point i was trying to make. Indeed, bizarre horror characters are loaded with stories and Thomas Kuebler wants to tell those stories in his own absolutely unique way.

Sewer Dweller

  All of his sculptures are mixed media. He uses variety of materials and techniques to give his characters realistic appearance and genuine look. The making process starts with traditional sculpting in super sculpey clay. Use of polymer clay allows him to cure critical parts of the sculpture with open flame for secure mold making process. Final pieces are then casted in resin or silicone and painted to staggering level of detail. 

  Bellow are pictures of some of his most representative works: Blind Beggar, Schlitzie and H.P. Lovecraft both owned by Guillermo del Toro, Krampus, editions of Papa Boogedy and other.

Blind Beggar

Simon "Schlitzie" Metz sculpture, part of Guillermo del Toro's collection "Cabinet of Curiosities"

The father of horror, H.P. Lovecraft

"Krampus: The Yule Lord", inspired by Brom's novel and illustrations.

Editions of Papa Boogedy.

  For more pictures of Thomas Kuebler's artwork and sculptures available for purchase, please visit his official website here. 

 Your comments and suggestions about this post are very welcome and will assist us in improving  Fantasy Sculpting Blogzine. 

Please subscribe to get updates on your email.