Oh Yeah!

I forgot to mention that my art was in the LEO!!!!!!!!!!

The End is Here

Pearl

Three Strikes

Worth its Wait

Confetti Death (Detail)

Confetti Death

Passed Away Peacefully in His Sleep (Detail)

Passed Away Peacefully in His Sleep

So, here it is, the end of the semester and I have to say that I have never been prouder of the work that I have made. I really put a lot of time and thought into the works that I made this semester and it really payed off. At the beginning of the semester I was a bit unsure of the art that I was going to make, but I worked through my clouded thoughts and found the true ideas that I am interested in. I feel more connected to my work than I have in the past, which is a good feeling. This semester I was excited to come to class and work and was excited to see the end products come together at the seminar show. These are the moments that we have all been working so hard to get to, and so far it definitely has payed off.

Not only am I proud of the art work , but I am also very proud of the show that my fellow seniors and I put together for senior seminar class. The off campus show was a huge success! I think that all of our guests were very impressed with the Art that was in the show, and I have to say that I was a bit impressed myself. Most all of the work was very well made and professional in the way that it was presented. The feeling that I had knowing that all of those people were there to see our work was really great. It was a shame that not everyone put as much time and energy into the show. Im not sure if they just didn't think that it was a very big deal or if they just didn't care but I was a bit disappointed in a few people. I guess that is just the way it goes though, no matter what the situation.

I also got a few pieces into the Student Juried Art Show this year! Worth its Wait, Pearl, and Lemon Yellow all got chosen to be in the show, and Lemon Yellow actually won the ceramics award! Getting into the Juried Show is very motivating. Knowing that a professional Artist out there likes your work well enough to display it to the world is a cool thing, and it drives you to continue.

Just for a Laugh

How many blankets does one dog need???

It's Been to Long

for the past two and a half weeks my living room has turned into a seamstress shop. I have been working on this quilt for ATLEAST 8 hours a day. There is glitter all over the living room, and Tank is really starting to dislike not being able to lay on the couch with me while I am doing this. Each piece is hand cut and hand sewn. It has been a very grueling and tedious process, which I feel in the long run is going to make me appreciate this piece all the more.

As of tonight, this is what I have finished so far. I only have about a foot or so left to do on the top of the quilt, and I will be finished with the sewing portion. Each row takes about four hours, if that tells you anything about how long and crazy this process has been. This is also the bed that I will be bringing to the space to display the piece on. I cannot wait to see it finished and in the space, It's going to be awesome!

Here is a detail of the patch work. Each patch is cut from white transparent materials, so that you can not only see the pills but hopefully it gives sort of a ghostly feel. I also chose shiny and glittery fabrics to keep with my theme of beautiful finishes.

Slaving away.

(The butterflies have nothing to do with it, it was just the only white quilt I could find around here that was reasonably priced and I could work with.)

Here is a small glimpse of what the piece will look like when finished. Each patch will contain different colored pills. I have sewn the patches with a small open portion, so that I can easily add the pills when I get the quilt in the space. This will keep the quilt from being so heavy and keep anything from happening to the pills or the quilt.

This isn't the greatest pic though.

Insert Title Here

I have decided to make molds of a hammer and a hatchet, with many other tools or weapons to follow. I haven't decided whether these will be used for my "Dressed to Kill" piece or whether I should do a piece similar to the bats where these tools have the gold "blood splatter" on them and they will be displayed sort of trophy like. The piece would be called "Tools of the Trade," and in this case the trade is murder. I was thinking about displaying them on a peg board like you would see in a lot of garages, but then I got to thinking maybe the peg board, mounting and the pieces could be in a shadow box or something, to further emphasize the trophy feel. The same goes for the axe mold below.

This axe mold is going to be huge!! I already had a few battles with the bat mold so I can only imagine what is going to happen with this mold. I tried to make this one a little less heavy by giving it a more triangular shape, but it is still going to be a beast of a mold. Which makes it all the more fun to test my boundaries and see just how big I can go.

I have decided to take Brian's advice and take a more subtle approach to the "Passed Away Peacefully in His Sleep" piece. I have bought a quilt which I am going to use as a base to add patches filled with pills. I have chosen different types and textured white transparent fabric for the patches. The colors of the pills will subtly show through the fabric, so that at first glance you may not even notice the pills. I had a hard time deciding whether or not to use the white fabrics and colored pills or colored fabrics and white pills. but I figured that the white fabric would look aesthetically better with all of my other work and that it would give it a more ghostly feel.

I also tried to decide when it was ok to use something found like pills and when should you make it out of ceramic. I think that the answer to this is in the WOW factor, and practicality. I wasn't sure whether to make my own pills or to buy them, and spray paint them to the color that I want. Due to time, and weight I figured it would be best to use real pills. Plus I got to thinking about how much just a bean bag weighs, and to have a blanket covered in ceramic pills would get really heavy really fast. I feel that with this number of pills and the way that they are going to be displayed that the wow factor is already there without me having to make all of the pills.

Space Lab Show

This past week I had my BFA critique as well as a space lab show. I thought that my BFA critique went fairly well. There were a lot of good ideas and thoughts about my work. Some of them were inspiring and other ideas were not exactly what I am going for with my work. I feel that the sound comment from Michael was a cool idea as well as dropping a skull and documenting it. I felt a bit of hostility in both of the critiques that happened on Tuesday, but I think that Miranda and myself composed ourselves very well. The fact that professors came up to us after our crits and gave us praise and words of encouragement was nice and also made me feel that we were the bigger people and are doing a great job. BFA crits always have a tendency of slowing down my momentum and making me think about everything that I am doing.

I was very pleased with the way that the show came out considering everything that was in the show was made this semester.

Three Strikes

Worth its Wait

Precious Metal II

Pearl

El Muerto del Dia

Finishing Touches

Yay!!! The bats are finally finished! I sprayed them with the clear matte spray paint, then splattered them with a gold model car paint. I was a little bummed that I wasn't going to be able to use gold luster on them because I thought that other paints would look cheap. I'm no blood splatter expert, but I think that they came out really good. I ordered some bat racks so that they can hang on the wall like trophies...Much like a murderer might keep to remember his kill. I was hoping that the racks would come in for my BFA critique, but they haven't showed up yet. They will definitely be hung for my space lab show on Thursday. And I am planning to display them at the gallery on Pearl.

This is the skull that I am going to use for my "Confetti Death" piece. I have hinged his jaw open dramatically wide to emphasize the severity and urgency of the confetti spewing out onto the floor. This piece will be displayed at the gallery show on Pearl.

Here are some of the pill bottles that I have started painting for my "Passed Away Peacefully in His Sleep" piece. The plan is to spray paint enough of these bottles to be able to make a pattern on a bed, much like a quilt. I have enough bottles to do this but it is going to take me a lot of time and spray paint to finish this one. I plan to have this piece finished for the show on Pearl.

These are the skulls that I have made for the "Worth its Wait" piece. The bottom skulls are mostly finished except for adding a few gold teeth to one of them. The top skull still needs to have gold luster applied. It should be finished for my BFA critique, if all goes well. This piece will also be in my Space Lab show on Thursday as well as the Seminar show on Pearl. I am very happy with this piece, the skulls came out very nice, and I think that the gold luster on the entire top skull will just send it over the top.

At the BFA Critique and the Space Lab show on thursday, I also plan to show a set of the brass knuckles that I made, which will be called "Precious Metal II," a smaller skull with a pearl luster on it, which I'm calling "Pearl," and a raku fired skull called "El Muerto del Dia." El Muerto del Dia is a play on the mexican holiday Day of the Dead. The title translates as The Dead of the Day.

I am nervous, as usual, about my BFA critique tomorrow, but I do feel very confident about the new work that I have produced over the last few months.

You Can't Take it with You

$11,000 worth of uncut one dollar bills

Splats on Bats

I started trying out methods to make the "blood splatter" on the bats, and from previous splatter paintings I knew that this technique would work. I basically suck glaze or paint, 3/4 to half way, up the oversized straw. I then hold the clean end of the straw up to the air hose nozzle. Aiming at the target you pull the trigger a...n...d...SPLAT! You have splatter.

I tried a few different glazes on some pieces of wood and found that the thicker one worked and looked better. So, I tried it on a bat.

My original plan was to use splattered clear glaze on the bat, fire them to cone 06 so that they wouldn't shrink down any more, then to trace all of the clear splatter with gold luster. After thinking about it for a little while I realized that it would be quite a challenge to get the gold luster on there perfectly, and once it was finished the white areas might come across unfinished because they would still have a bisque appearance.

So I tried a few different things in the studio to see what type of effect they would have on the white bisque. I tried different oils, wax, and lacquer and nothing really looked good. Finally I went to Home Depot to look around and I found a clear spray matte varnish. The varnish gives it a little bit of a sheen, which takes away from the dry bisque look.

I also found a few different types of gold paint to try instead of the gold luster.

This week I made an extra "just in case" skull, and will continue to make a few more next week.

Uneventful Events

This week has been pretty uneventful. I made a few more skulls and a few more bats. I hope that I have enough extra ones now so I can move on to the next stages. I did a test fire of a bat and a skull to see if there would be any warping and how much shrinkage there would be. The bat only shrank an 3/4 of an inch, and you can't really tell that much around the girth of it. It didn't warp any that I could tell, which is comforting. My plan is to finish firing the rest of the bats and skulls this week so I can start glazing and have them ready for Dan and my space lab show on the 18th of Oct.

I also started spray painting a few of the pill bottles for the "Passed Away Peacefully in his Sleep" piece that I am working on. They came out pretty good but it takes quite a few coats to cover up the writing on the labels. I was thinking about removing the labels, but on the other hand I like the way that they look with the labels. They look more realistic, of course, with the label. I suppose I could try a different kind of spray paint.

Cactus Corpse

Doin Work

So this past week has been very successful. I finally got the bat mold dry enough to crank out a few bat casts and they are looking very nice. The detail and the grain came out in the mold, which makes them look more like a real bat. I have one more bat to make for my three strikes piece, but I think that I will make a few more just to be on the safe side. You never know what could happen in ceramics. I think that I am going to display these three bats on bat display hooks, Which are used to hang real bats sort of like trophies.

I also had luck with the skull mold that I made last week. I have made two skulls one with a closed jaw and one with an open jaw. I haven't decided if I want to just display the one gold skull, or do as I did before with the lemons that I made last spring and have a pile with the bottom skulls plain white and the top skull be the gold luster. I am still thinking about this, although I think that the pile will be more effective and visually interesting.

I am also going to do a piece this semester that involves the use of narcotic drugs. I had a friend that overdosed on oxycontin that had a pretty big affect on me. I have dated quite a few people with this problem so I know what a big deal it is and I have learned from my own experiences that it is nothing to mess with. One thing that really bothered me when he passed away was that the first line in his obituary said that "He passed away peacefully in his sleep." I thought that that was such a load of crap for them to cover up the real reason for his death, and to put it so nicely, when in reality he died from an overdose. So for this piece I am thinking that I am going to spray paint a few hundred pill bottles white, and attach them onto some sort of sheet or cover in a beautiful pattern, and display them on a bed. The title for this piece will be "Passed Away Peacefully in His Sleep."

While I am on the topic of drugs and overdose, I was thinking about the piece that I posted on Friday, "Confetti Death." I am really inspired by this piece and I feel that I can make this piece my own by tying it into the work I am doing while improving on the concept. Confetti is the term used for the balloons filled with black tar heroin, swallowed and carried or hidden by mules. I want to have an open mouth skull sitting on a pedestal with hundreds of these balloons coming from the mouth, going down the pedestal and spilling onto the floor.

I will post my progress pics tomorrow. I left my camera at home.

Confetti Death