sculptures

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of sculpture.

   The gallery acquired three bronze sculptures for its new wing.

   Visitors photographed the marble sculptures lining the garden path.

   Note

   The plural counts individual pieces: three bronze sculptures, the sculptures along a path. When the art is meant as a body of work, English usually keeps the uncountable singular, as in a museum of modern sculpture. The raised ornament on a shell is likewise usually uncountable, so the plural rarely appears there. The same spelling also serves as the present-tense verb, and only the sentence around it tells the two apart.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of sculpture.

   The artist sculptures her portraits from wax before casting them in bronze.

   He sculptures driftwood into delicate birds for the seaside market.

   Note

   The -s ending belongs only to a singular third-person subject: she sculptures and the river sculptures, but they sculpture. The verb reaches beyond the studio, too. It can describe erosion reshaping land, so wind or water can be the subject as naturally as an artist. In that use it usually takes the landform itself as its object.

   The wind sculptures the sandstone into arches and hollows.

   Over centuries the sea sculptures the headland into stacks.

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