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

Bats and Bones

This week I have been working on making a mold of a skull. The skull itself is a three part mold and the jaw is another two part mold. It was a bit of a challenge figuring out how this mold was going to work and how many parts it actually needed to be. All in all I think that the mold turned out pretty well, for my first three part skull mold :0)

This is the jaw mold for the skull. I just finished it today.

I did the first pour of the skull mold today and I took it out of the mold a little prematurely. The cast needed to dry a bit longer and I got a bit impatient. Luckily it was the first pour and it really doesn't count anyway. Besides when they don't turn out it's not a total loss because you have learned what not to do. But what did come me out of the mold looked great to me.

So my idea for the skull is to make it gold using luster and the title will be "Worth it's Wait." I am trying to play off of the saying "worth it's weight in gold" But also trying to say that death is worth the wait.

This bat mold has taken a full week to dry out. I tried to pour the mold in the middle of the week but it did not work out because the mold was still too wet. I tried to pour another one today, and although I did not get a good cast of it I did learn a few things from the pour. I now know that I need to make these bats a bit thicker, and that they need to stay in the mold for a good while to dry. Tomorrow I will try it again, hopefully with more success.

I forgot to mention last week that the reason that I am making three bats is because the title of the piece is "Three Strikes" as in three strikes and you are out.

Thank You Come Again

Work

At the beginning of the week I Rakued a few things that I had left over from the summer session. I am pretty pleased with the way that they came out, although they are not quite what I was going for.

I finally got a mold of brass knuckles to work, after at least four attempts. I am planning to use them in an installation with different weapons that would be used on people. I also might make them the handles for a few mugs. Then I can give everyone a nice "Mugging" for Christmas. :)

For the Rakued skeletons I was thinking that I would take them to a location and dig little graves for them, bury them, and leave them to be found. Photo documentation would be the art. But I do think that by doing this not only I will feel some emotions but the persons that find them will as well.

As for the bats I am going to make three of them for a piece. I plan for them to be white and have different "Blood Splatters" in gold luster on them. I like for my pieces to be white because it gives them a ghostly feeling. I want to use gold luster for the blood because it is worth as much as gold. It is precious, pure, and worth a lot.

Understanding death doesn't necessarily take away our anxieties or fears about our own death, or our sadness about other people's deaths, but it does help us find ways to continue on with our lives.

-Penny Colman

A Little Insight

It took me so long to realize why I was making the things I have made in the past. I felt so pressured to come up with this great reason and concept to tell everyone at the critiques that I overlooked the true reasons and concepts. It is also possible that I did not want to seem psycho. None the less I want to make art about what I find interesting and fascinating. I am a curious person and death is a very mysterious thing that I am reminded of all too often.

A few times a week I clean at a funeral home, so I see dead bodies all the time, which isn't really a problem for me until there is a person lying in a casket way before their time. I am always plagued with the questions, Why are they here? and What happened? It is always nice to think that the situation was just out of our/their hands, but what if it's not?

Forensics and figuring out murder mysteries has always interested me, which is another reason I find myself fascinated by this topic.

My work this year will consist of a body of work that shows the different ways that we (as humans) destroy ourselves.

Although the content of each piece will be different, ie: murder, suicide, drugs, food..ect., the over all theme will be the same, and the way that they are approached, and the finish will be similarly executed.

I thought that this photo of a murdered ceramic flower urn is quite appropriate and funny after the discussion that we had about my work on Thursday. Not quite the same but funny none the less.

Some Thoughts

Here lately I have been thinking about all of the things that have been said in critiques, in artist lectures, and about my art over the past years. In just about every artist lecture they talk about the things that they are interested in, and how their work reflects these things, and how it has grown and evolved. I have been thinking about my work and trying to figure out what interests me and what my common thread is. I have made work about the war and how that affects the people that are involved (mainly the death of soldiers and innocent bystanders). I have made work about murder, for the verb project, one murder by knife at the hands of someone else, the other about abortion and execution by the hands of a mother. I have made work about guns, and only guns that are specifically made to use in self defense, guns made to shoot other human beings. I have made work about Jesus and religion, and although I made it light hearted and some what comical, the object that I chose was a cross that was used to aid people that were/are on their death beds. People try to wash away their sins, confess, pray and go to church so that when it is their time to go they can die at peace. I have made work about the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead. And work about taking care of the environment before we single handedly destroy our selves. I realize now that my work is not about the topics themselves, but the results of them. All of these things are very political topics and what makes them political is the fact that they kill or are about death in some way. My common thread is about how fragile our lives are and how we do things that contribute to our demise.