Unemployment

I've been working in a large company that was swallowed by a larger company and then again devoured by another even larger company.  I made it through seven layoffs.  Seven of them in so many years.  Year eight however I was not so lucky.  In December I got the dreaded email with a subject line that said "Meeting" and the Master of Layoffs was one of the invitees.  We all know what that means.

Well, as it turns out I got to stay on 60 days thanks to Illinois mass layoff WARN law and then I had 60 days (four paychecks) of severance.  Time for ART.

My last day was February 12th.  February 13th I had my first interview with a start-up company in which I would be the first 6 month to hire employee.  I ended up getting the job.  So for February and March I was able to focus on ceramics!  I worked on a world of these little characters called Unfunts.

Stuff and Things

I was unemployed for a little bit this year and made a world of little ceramic characters I named Unfunts.  They're still sitting on the shelf that I put them on in April because I'm looking for a place to fire or a kiln to share.  Since April I've only focused on my new job (as is typical in the early stages) with a start up company.  The hours were brutal but I've got the work down to a manageable amount now.  A couple of things occurred to me in the past year, one of which being that my interests are similar to a nerdy 12 year old boy....video games.

 Making ceramics is just as much fun so it's time to refocus my after hours into that instead.  I started on a project that is based on some rock posters I've made for various shows over the past year.  They're based a lot on silhouettes and John pointed out that I can use lighting to create shadows behind the piece to create the silhouettes.

Cleaning the Bones - Maceration!

I took the bones out of the box so I have pictures so I can inventory them while the cleaning process takes place.  The bones were pretty clean already but I want to get them really clean and white.

The simplest way to clean bones is Maceration.*  

What is maceration? Using bacterial action in water to clean bone is called maceration. This is 

the simplest method for cleaning bone and works best for large sturdy bones, for example mammal 

skulls and long bones.   It is not recommended for very delicate bones such as those found in birds or 

reptiles, or for skeletons  you would like to keep together (articulated).    ALL of the bones will 

separate, as maceration removes the connective tissue that keeps the skeleton together.

Step 1: Remove any remaining tissue or hide to the best of your ability. This will 

make the maceration go faster. 

Step 2: Fully immerse the bone in a plastic container of plain water.

Bones-->Container

Step 3: Leave the container in a warm location where you won’t mind the smell.

Step 4: Periodically pour the greasy, smelly water out (gardens love it!) and top off 

with fresh water.

Step 5: When the water remains clear, the bacteria have finished breaking down any 

remaining tissue.

Step 6: If you wish to whiten or sterilize the bones, transfer them into a container 

of hydrogen peroxide (drug-store strength is fine). Remove them when they have 

reached the shade of white you desire. 

NEVER USE BLEACH. Chlorine-based bleaches will degrade bone. The chlorine 

remains behind and continues to eat away at the bone, eventually reducing it to a 

white powder. Hydrogen Peroxide is a safer alternative. 

Step 7: Some teeth may  have fallen out during the maceration process. Once the 

skull is clean and dry, you can glue these back into place using a simple white glue 

(also called PVA glues) such as Weldbond or Elmer’s. 

*http://www.boneroom.com/faqs/maceration.pdf

 Evolve@boneroom.com. "The Bone Room." N.p., n.d. Web.

Bones Project

I went to Colorado in August.  My brother in law picked us up from the airport for the four hour drive to  Aspen.  Dead in the middle of the trip he got a flat.  We pulled over and the Barlow men started to change the tire.  I wandered off into the brush and started looking around.   Under one of the bushes was an extremely large animal's spinal chord, still intact. There were other bones as well plus part of the skull and some teeth.  I ran back to the car and emptied out my backpack and went back and filled it up with bones.  Sure I got some funny looks from the family about a. the fact that I filled a bag with side of highway bones and b.  the fact that I was Very excited to have said bag of bones.   It was the best ending to a flat tire ever.  Fate!

Much discussion was had about how I was going to get the bones back to Chicago.  I'd had a little argument with an extremely flawed member of the TSA on the way out of Chicago and didn't want to deal with them again so it was decided I'd box the bones and ship them back to Chicago.  Voila!

Box of Bones in Mah House

Now to figure out what to use them for.

New Show!

Three weeks ago a woman from a gallery called Brick contacted me to be a part of a show on May 3rd.   I have be at school to fire the piece tomorrow at 2:30.  Though I haven't been procrastinating I haven't started the project yet.   Work has been insane and I'm playing with not on my band, but another band (the Heavy Bombers...yay!) on May 12th.  It's going to be really fun but I'm having to put in some serious practice time.

The show's theme is "food".  My idea is to build a huge, oversized shishkabob with human feet and hands as the meat.  I made a regular sized one out of sculpey a few years ago with baby feet and hands.  So I guess the deal is, I gotta be up all night tonight to finish this thing, then it needs to dry for 7 hours in my oven then I bring it in at 2:30.  It's a snap right?  Heheh...We'll see.

Gallery Opening and Music!

This weekend was amazing.  On Friday night the gallery opened early for family and we had some wine and looked at all the pieces.  So much good stuff!  I'm going back to take pictures next Monday so I can post them here.  Friends came and brought beers and everyone was in a great mood.  It felt a little like a wedding though in that you have two hours to talk to a million people and it goes by in a flash.  Afterwards I had that day after Christmas feeling where you're like...oh wait, it's over?  What now?


Saturday I thought we had to be there all day so I went to school for my abnormal psych class at 9am and then headed over to the gallery at noon.  It was completely empty.  My mom and pa came up to the gallery and checked everything out with me.  It was spooky being in there with maybe two other people.  It was St. Patrick's day and everything was pretty horrible downtown AHHHHHHHH - slutbarf was everywhere and girls that were way too young were chugging whiskey and every single person it seemed had on green, except me and the frat boys were playing with their junk and saying chug alot and there were drunk people holding babies and leprechauns snapping bras and ....you get the picture. So we packed up into my mom's van and I drove us out of downtown.  We had to go south to go north because the traffic was in....sane. It was fun having them in town for a couple of days.  My mom and Jerry are such a hoot. We went to Red Apple which is a polish buffet  and ate far too much food.  Afterwards we went back to the house and I put my mom down for a nap and got ready for the show at Quenchers.  Quenchers was awesome.  Lots of people there and we played two sets.  One sober, one blitzed but since everybody else was wasted I don't think anybody cared.  Our friends are awesome.  


So, I guess it's time to start a new project.  I have an idea of what I want to do but I'm not sure exactly how to configure the situation so I'm going to think about it for a couple of days.  I do know it will have to do with Jew Holes or...the hole in the sheet.  

Gallery Opening Friday March 16th!

Tomorrow night (3/16) is the opening for the show I've been working on.  If I can take pictures of the other work there I will post them here.  Some pieces are great/inspirational, others -for instance where the artist is scribbling all over the wall a bunch of incoherent sentences in different colors or scraping the paint off the wall - not so great.  There are a couple of pieces that are particularly amazing but words won't do them justice.  


This should be fun!