Manaaki Tuna 

The Long Fin Eel

One of my first largeg scale driftwood sculptures. The eel was roughly 14m long and had no internal frame other than driftwood. 

The eel now resides at the Anatoki Salmon farm in Takaka Golen bay.

The Process

I didnt use any sketches or scaling material for this sculpture, i just referenced images and studied the eels in the river where i built it.

I built up driftwood with screws and brads. Starting with the head which i planne to position on stage an build the body in situ.

The next step after placing the head was to build the fins (flax on ply) and start the body.

As you can see i built the body framed with driftwood which proved difficult. After this i cladded and infilled the body with smaller pieces of driftwood.

And it was done.. Which actually took a long time but i didnt take any pictures.

Having the head suspended above the speakers and crowd was risky so we over engineered that section of the sculpture. 

Thanks to everyone that helped and the entire Twisted Frequency crew!