Sculpture 1: Bas Relief and simple mold making

A bas relief is a shallow sculpture that is brought to life by bright light- the egyptians used them a lot for this reason. A relief is sort of a cross between drawing (or maybe engraving, but basically a form of drawing) and sculpture. It is pretty challenging, actually, or maybe it's just because I've only tried it once. Basically, all the highpoints have to come to the same level and the low points have to stay at their level. They are really easy to make a mold from for this reason. You just brush on plaster, let it dry, pat on fiberglass dipped in plaster, and then once dry dig out the clay and press new clay in.

I tried to bring an alaska quarter to copy, but since the meter takes 8 quarters I must have put that one in, even though I remember specifically saving it out. I still had several quarters so I used the banner from I think Connecticut and the ship from Florida and made a ship. I have cast 2, then my arms got very tired, and I still have not cast the third (we are required to make three, and I am going to use mine as stepping stones in the garden.)
Here is the plaster mold.


Here is the drying stepping stone. It reads "A sailor needs the sight of the sea" unless this is the one I smoothed out the original words on and etched in "Look Around You". I am actually too tired to flip over to the compose option where I can view it. I have not decided what to etch on the final stone. Maybe a song lyric. Maybe a quote about exploration. OMG! I will put an iceberg in the background and the banner can say "Antarctica was discovered in 1822". Yeah. Pithy.

Okay, and across the bottom: And no one was born there until 1978.

Sculpture 1: seaform item preliminary sketch pages

I realize that I love having pictures of my art on my blog so I can show people it, and look at the progression, but I have not posted any pictures at all lately. I am still doing art, but ceramics take a *long* time to complete because even after you are done sculpting you must wait a few days for it to get bone dry, then a few days for there to be a kiln firing that it fits in, and then you have to glaze it and fire it again. I have no finished pieces so far, although my apple and house (first two projects) should be ready for glazing this week. I took pictures of my little house and in progress shots of my bas relief tile, but now they are not on my camera. I do not know why. So, I am going to post some pictures of the research (kind of) that i am doing for our current project.

So far I have a sad, asymmetrical stack of nearly-spheres.

It looks a bit like this (I unconsciously capitalize the word base because i did for years going to BASE) Basically the weight of it is deforming the spheres, and it is just bad. It is lumpy and heavy and I have abandoned my first several ideas to salvage it. It is about 10 inches tall, and technically hollow except that it has little internal supports and stuff.

So, what I decided to do is give it texture and appendages in the manner of sea creatures.

These are some interesting features of sea creatures. I don't know how they should go on the spheres, but it would be neat to do the small ball in seahorse texture, the next in fish scale texture, the next in sea slug nubs, and then the bottom sort of covered in tentacles and suckers. Then it can have little features on it, such as a ring of claws and I don't know what all.

As I looked for photographs of actual sea creatures I found a number of awesome examples of other artists' sea and aquatic creatures. There was a wonderful sculpture of just the top of a hippo, by diane gilbert, so that it looks like it is submerged when placed on a surface. There was also a steampunk tentacle, and some of that speculative biology art or whatever it is called, that looks like science illustrations but is impossible. I also sketched some chihuly pieces (I am really impressed by his glass floats, how playful and serene!) but idk, the limitations of clay mean that I will not be able to really pull off anything like his shapes.

So. I am making an Item. Maybe it will look like a tribute to the sea. Maybe it will look like an alien. I think I will paint it black (there are only a few colors of school glazes, and bc we have to fire at cone 10 apparently not that many glazes for that firing temperature are very rich or bright even if i went to get my own.) and submerge it in water. If only I had a little water feature in the yard.

Speaking of glazes, glaze is often where a student sculpture falls apart (not literally, the joins and removing it from the armature are where they literally do). I think it is because you can't see the true color while you work, only after firing, so coordinating colors and choosing the appropriate one is very hard. A lot of work looks dusty or murky, or overly bright and neon. I don't know how to overcome this especially with only the 10 colors of school glaze available, so I plan to make my pieces black or white, or raku fire them. Oooh I bet this sea creature will look awesome if i can raku fire it.

Sculpture 1

I am taking my first community college art class at Contra Costa College. It is really different than art at UCSC [I have only 1 studio course under my belt there, although I do have 2 courses that were lectures with a TA supervised studio component] because it is not very strict. There are several high school students, people without art training, even some people without art interest (who need to get the GE for their AA I suppose) as well as some intermediate and advanced students. Most of the advanced students are older women and men who are artists in other disciplines. So there is a huge range of inclinations and abilities, and it is a lot of fun to see what everyone comes up with for each assignment (only the beginning students have to work on the same assignments though.)

I am making this terrible thing. It is our first free sculpture, and the prompt was to make a vehicle or anything you want. I went with anything I want, and I have a crooked stack of semispheres. It is so bad. I can't stand how bad it is. But, over the weekend thinking about it I decided to make it more sea creaturey, and I am excited about it again. I am going to hollow it as best I can, and cover it in appendages and textures, mainly tentacles of course but also some shapes I am lifting from Chihuly's venetian vases and seaforms.

About returning to Oakland

I have lived:
Costa Mesa
Newport Beach
Alameda
Oakland (actually I have an Emeryville zip code, but we are in Oakland beside the Berkeley border so there are signs saying "Welcome to Oakland" all around so I am sure I live there.)
Felton
Santa Cruz
That isn't a lot of places, but I nonetheless feel that I would like to live in the San Francisco bay area for my adult life. There is just so much here! (I am mainly comparing it to SC, of course, because that is where I lived from 18-20) For example, to direct people to my home in SC I would have to use the university main entrance as the orientation point. Because it is mainly the only thing around, you know? But in Oakland there is a giant public sculpture I can give as a landmark.

When looking up a picture of it I found some interesting criticisms of the message of it (I think it's self aware and not a slight to Oakland), but I linked to one that seemed more neutral.

Anyway, there are all sorts of nice things about Oakland and the east bay. There are a lot of very nice schools here, such as Contra Costa College (I have my first sculpture class of the summer there in a few hours, and so I can't vouch for quality of instruction yet but the campus is sooo lovely.) but also such as UC, Mills, and the school I am sort of aiming for for grad school (more than 2 years away still), California College of the Arts.

Also, it has got a lot of crime. This is a map of my neighborhood. (I believe if you click on it the words will be legible, but basically each little round arrow is a homicide, color coded for each of 3 years that are displayed)

Trailer Project Part 1

Well, the first thing I did when I moved into the trailer was swept out the dust and wiped everything down. Next I removed and set aside the table in the sleeping area (it converts from dining) and the extra cushions, and then I took out the old curtains. They were gathered and sackcloth textured and they made the space more cluttered than it has to be both by pushing into the space a few inches on each side. It looks loads better without them, but on the other hand now everyone- including the neighbors whose apartment building's second story cement corridor overlooks our driveway- can see into my trailer. So, I went to Home Depot and for $7.65 I got a roll of privacy screen contact paper that I think works very well.

That's kind of scary, actually.
But, it is just caused by my harmless lava lamp, which easily dominates this space during the evening
Here you can see how the "privacy screen" contact paper looks. It works pretty well to obscure everything. I had wanted just a plain frosted pattern, but HD had exactly one choice so that is what I bought. I don't think it looks too bad, although it does look like in bathrooms. Also, this is NOT how my trailer will look. This is an old duvet cover that I am using to contain the old smelling couch and protect it from getting little tears, which it will do if you sit on it. Aside from the lava lamp I want it white pink and gray in here. Orange is just too intense I think in a tiny space, although I do really like orange.

Thinking about Hunger Feelings

"There is also evidence that their hunger is more intense. Kolata notes that the food-obsessed, sneaky, guilt-ridden behavior of fat people on diets is similar to the behavior of thin experimental subjects who are deliberately underfed. “A lot of thin people think that because they can skip a meal and feel a bit hungry, everyone can do the same,” one obesity researcher tells her. “They assume the sensation of hunger is the same for everyone.” They’re wrong, says Kolata: “Fat people are fat because their drive to eat is very different from the drive in thin people.” link

Wait, really? I am reading a review contrasting two books, not the books themselves and not the studies they're based on, so I am like 3 degrees separated from whatever study they're using, but that is still a very interesting idea. I do not fall into either group; I am ordinary weight. I don't know that I have ever felt intense hunger. That actually sounds like a terrible experience. By the time I start to feel constantly hungry, which is only after more than 3 days off solid foods, I always feel very zen and also sort of tired, and not up to feeling anything intensely. After 5 days without food, which is the most I have ever done, I don't feel hungry in my body at all, but I do start really feeling less with it (kind of tipsy and fragile, and when I did this in winter I felt reeeally cold) and so I stop. So either I don't have the capacity for intense hunger or I feel it as other non-hunger symptoms (like being cold). Oh, wait, my regular hunger (this is such a terrible explanation. I am not making any sense.) is either "hey, it's morning, what is there for food?" and thus not a physical feeling at all, or it is like my stomach feels kind of empty but it doesn't harm me or bother me. Anyway, the point is I do not mind going without food if I have planned on it or am too busy. Going without food because of poor planning or there is no good food available is different because it makes me angry. Well that was a huge diversion from why this is interesting. I know kind of that people experience hunger differently (they have different favorite foods and different meal schedules, so why not different hunger?) but I had not expected that whole groups of people grouped by body weight did notice a difference in their "drive to eat."

The article also says "Likewise, thin people have fewer fat cells, and when they gain weight the cells don’t multiply; they just expand. Partly because of the signals sent by these fat cells, but also because of how those signals are conveyed to and interpreted by the brain, obese people do not feel satiated as soon as thin people do."
Is that true? Signals from fat cells? In an entirely medieval way* I am going to speculate that it could totally be having different kinds of stomachs, because that is where you feel hungry, instead of fat cells because those are all over under your skin (and also you can have fat cells in among your organs, but I don't know exactly what that means or who has that). Oh, I suppose to test it you could ask people who'd had liposuction (it takes out fat with a pump, it is dangerous. Blood you can do because it is liquid and meant to go through veins, but fat I think is solid ish and hard to get out.) whether they felt satiated faster than before. In fact probably someone has done that.

Okay also, I think the second sentence of the quote is worded badly because it almost contradicts the rest of it.

*I like intuitive medieval thinking. Physics was like mind blowing, everything you would expect, like that things are held in their orbit by tiny invisible strings, is totally wrong. If you spin something, say a shot put, around in a circle over and over, it will not remember to stay in the circle once you let it go! It will fly away straight in the last direction it was heading before you let go!!! There's a conceptual problem, where you shoot a monkey, and you have to decide to shoot it or shoot below it, because it is going to fall... and you shoot below it! Because of gravity! It even works on small things that have horizontal velocity. Also? If you shoot up a bullet, it will come down with the same velocity. So you should only shoot at the ground or at targets. Also there was all kinds of amazing stuff with wedges and stuff. Torque. I don't know what all. I should audit a physics class, that stuff was amazing.

Lichens and Mosses

Here is a terrarium I found online. I have decided to become a lichen enthusiast and do limited work with moss. You see, the whole school is scraped of lichen and dirt at the end of the school year (I suppose it does not grow much during summer, so they do it in spring and it is ready for fall). So yesterday I liberated some lichen from the railings outside the science library. The internet says it takes hundreds of years to grow, but I am pretty sure it grew to cover the middles of these metal bars in just 12 months, so I hope they will grow in a similar time on a tile. It also takes longer to grow from one lichen spore/flake than it does to grow from a lot, which is what I am going to use. They turn into dust when you brush them off to collect them, and then i am going to mix the dust with buttermilk and brush it on a tile from HD. I looked online, and tiles cost only a few dollars so I don't feel bad spending money even though I am trying not to do so lately.

While looking up info about lichens I was reminded of my love for mosses. Mosses need wet conditions, and they die rather than just going dormant, so I have never tried to grow moss but I am very interested in indoor tabletop fairy gardens, in which moss is used as groundcover. I saw this stonehenge online

and I am going to do one in a teacup! Because tea and stonehenge are some of the nicest things in England. I am very, very interested in microgardens as art.
Picture it: A row of 5 different patterned floral teacups, the first of which is a small cottage, then a small school, then a small house, then a large house, then a graveyard.

I think lichen has less potential in that area, but I am interested in a few other effects with lichen. One is that it makes things look old. I think it would be interesting to do a ceramic or cement sculpture that looks very current or depicts a current political figure, and then grow lichen on it to convey the sense that it is quite far in the future, like in the tv show Life After Humans where they simulate aging monuments. Or perhaps I can think of something clever to do with a gravestone. So far the only thing I can think of is buying yours early and then lichening it so that when it goes in there will be an incongruity between the date and the visible aging of the stone. That's not that rewarding or interesting in my opinion. I am a creative person. I can't say this is genius or anything, but it is at least something: lichen grows very well on limestone. Set a long strip of limestone into The other effect I like is that it is alive and very lightweight, meaning that for wall art it is ideal. That is what the tile is for, it will ideally be a set of 3 bright green 12x12 panels in a few years. Apparently lichen can only grow in clean air, so it would be a good indicator of air quality.

I am also interested in moss hung vertically on walls. Google "moss wall" and some of them are stunning. That is more intensive a project than the lichen tiles though because for a medium sized wall hanging I would need to build a frame, buy netting, water the thing often, and then keep it somewhere moist enough.