By Morgan Noseworthy
Andrew McCaffrey had a hard time hanging out with the neighbourhood kids at a young age since there was no neighbourhood. Growing up in the rural community of Ardrossan, AB left him with a lot of alone time, so he did what any aspiring young artist would do: he took up woodcarving.
After being inspired by the carved-wood Loki mask in the Jim Carrey movie, ‘The Mask,’ he picked up a carving knife and began whittling. That spun into experimentation with other malleable materials and brought him to where he is today.
In his pre-teens, McCaffrey took up sculpting as a way to satisfy his artistic desires. He started working with plasticine as a cheap and easy way to create his sculptures. In his late teens, he moved on to polymer-based clay for sculptures. Followed by casting molds in resin, which he did through most of his twenties. That led to his current work: jeweling.
McCaffrey gets his inspiration from pop culture; horror movies, industrial music, comic books and video games, as well as historic art, events and figures. Through his sculpting, he has been given the opportunity to meet some notable people such as Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), Ogre (Skinny Puppy), Tommy Victor (Prong, also Danzig’s current guitarist) and Glenn Danzig himself.
One of McCaffrey’s finest handcrafted pieces portrays the metal icon Lemmy Kilmister combined with Motorhead’s mascot, Snaggletooth. The ring features Lemmy’s face, complete with mutton chops, but combined with the iconic Snaggletooth horns and chain.
He recently completed work on a ring depicting the infamous Baron Samedi, a prominent figure for the Loa of Haitian Voodou. Samedi is also a villain in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, and video game, GoldenEye. Andrew has also recently completed work on some detailed handcrafted rings titled Whiteout, Radar Rider and Only Way to Feel the Noise.
He is currently working on a line of small masks designed to be placed on rings called Frightside. This series of rings will be poured to molds of designs by McCaffrey himself. These old-school horror rings will feature a witch, a cat, a devil, a pirate, an alien, a vampire, a werewolf and a robot.
McCaffrey stresses the importance of starting small when trying to get a start with sculpting.
“The best way is the smallest, cheapest way: just pick up some plasticine from the Dollar Store and start rollin’,” McCaffrey said.
He was offered a spot at this summer’s Terminus industrial festival in Calgary. Organizer and fan of his work, Chris Hewitt, offered him a table for only the price of admission. “I had a fantastic run,” he said, talking about the chance to release his art from his studio into the wild.
To view more of McCaffrey’s work, you can find him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @kamjsculptor.