Tony Cragg’s Manipulations Immediate Response When I first saw this piece I was a little disturbed by it because of all the smaller hands sprouting out of the bigger hand. I thought the hands continually getting smaller made the piece start to resemble a coral reef in the ocean especially since the color was like a rusty orange color that is similar to a lot of coral. From seeing just how small the hands get, I can tell that the sculptor had to work very meticulously to get the details perfect. Objective Description At the base of the sculpture are two very large hands that are an orangey-brown rusty color. These two hands are reaching upwards, but at the end of each of the fingers another smaller hand sprouts from the bigger hand. Each of these five hands is also sprouting one more hand from each of its fingers, and the hands continue to multiply until it gets too small to see the details. The hands at the end are much smaller than the two hands at the base of the sculpture. Technical Decisions In the Manipulations sculpture, Tony Cragg shows some meticulous and painstaking construction on the hands in the sculpture. He does a great job of showing the specific details on each of the hands. In each hand, Tony Cragg makes the material look as if it folds where the skin folds on the hands. He also manages to perfectly depict the knuckles, tendons, and palms of the hands even on the smaller hands. This sculpture is placed on a pedestal. It is not exactly clear what material is used but it looks like it is made of metal. The Work in the World This sculpture is at its core just a bunch of hands sprouting from each other. The hands made me think of how the first thing we did as a class was make models of our own hands. In terms of how this relates to the real world, I think of how humans exist. Two humans come together and have kids, and eventually those kids have kids, and it keeps going on similar to the sculpture where two hands come together to make even more hands, which make even more hands. The Story it Tells After looking at this sculpture for a while I thought that this sculpture was really trying to convey the idea of networking and influence. The first two hands are one person, and each hand that sprouts from that hand is another person that was influenced by the original hands. This influence can be good or bad, but it just shows the power that one person can have over many other people. Depending on how you look at the sculpture, it can seem comforting or disturbing, and I think that depends on whether you expect a good or a bad influence.