PROGRESS - WET CLAY FIGURE FINISHED 2/21/12

Okay! 

I ended up remolding the face again, I think maybe twice more.  The 10th one was actually okay except that I realized her chin was like five inches from her neck when I photographed it which made her look like a sphinx so I cut it off again.  Here's that nonsense on which I wasted five hours:

 I finally figured out how to do it.  Eleventh try is the charm!  I ended up putting the clay in the mold and pulling it out two hours later.  After that I cleaned up the face because, for the mold, you have to block in all of the undercuts with polymer clay so that you can pull the object out after casting.  What this means is that for all twelve faces, I had to remake the eyes and nose holes, both of which take way longer than one might think.  Then I let the thing air dry/harden for another two hours except for the outer portion of the back of the face which I covered with plastic.  I then hollowed out the face and let it harden yet again so that when I went to push it on, it wouldn't warp.  I carefully laid the faceless girl torso down on her back and slipped and scored the head hole (hmmm) and then did the same for the back of the cast face.  I pressed the face onto the hair using all of the dips.  So, what this means is I pressed under the eyes, under the lips, and under the chin, and used my palms to lightly press the cheeks.  Before cleaning up the face again (because when I pressed it slightly deformed) I let it dry, yet again.  Took another two hours to make the ear and then I carefully cleaned up the face and at the advice of my husband, stopped f*cking with it. Viola!  It's still maybe 3% weird but I'll take it.

Because of all of the issues, I had a bunch of faces that I'd cut off of the sculpture so I putzed around some and made some other things from the faces for the rest of the day on Friday.  I loved the little nose mouth tile and ended up making a bunch of them.  Cow-Boy is my favorite of the heads.

My husband's father and step mother came in for a few days and so I took some time off to do fun things on Saturday and Sunday.  We went to see Shakespeare's Midnight Summer Dream at the Shakespeare theater and it was awesome.   They left on Monday and I came down and prepared the legs for assemblage on Tuesday.

On Tuesday 2/21 I assembled the shorts, legs (which had been air drying  except for the ends since Friday) and shoes.  I used dowels to act as the leg bones to keep a vaguely natural posture and stance, except that I made the knees slightly knocked because that's how little kids stand.  I let it dry for an hour and held my breath and tried standing it up.  Holy crap!  It worked?  No way.  

YES!  This thing is standing on it's own two feet. 

It feels really weird to be finished with this part of the project.  I've been in the studio so long I've gotten used to doing this every night and that feels good. 

I've been looking at books for inspiration for my next project.  I really love Beth Cavaner and Pamela Earnshaw Kelly's animal sculptures.  I love monkeys/apes/gorillas.  Since I can't have one and rarely get to touch them, I might make a few to hang around the house.

I've also been thinking about one of my closest friends and old band members today.  Knox (or Kayte, or Kate now?)  moved to New York last summer.  We used to do hilarious crazy stupid fun psychedelic shit together and she is one of the most unusual and awesome people in the world.  We recorded this song together with my husband for a songwriting challenge that we participate in sometimes.  She can sing like a mofo.  Our friend Jodi wrote the lyrics.  I MISS KNOX.  I wish I could reach into the internet and pull her through it to Chicago.  She will come to see us March 24th!  I cannot wait.

Cornhole:

http://prfchallenge.com/content/music/the_ghosts_of_prf_past/cornhole.mp3

I also want to add that when I'm downstairs in the studio, time makes no sense.  Twelve hours feels like an hour.  My studio is magic.

Progress 2/15/2012

So, the last five days have been sort of difficult but partially successful.  I molded the face and attempted to attach it five times.   I guess I got super distracted on 2/11 and made some other stuff with the failed molded faces which was fun, but didn't really fit in with the timeline I've set up.   What a huge pain in the ass that has been.  Actually it's been a learning experience that is invaluable but still, huge pain in the ass.  I finally did get the thing attached after having it slump on me, over and over again.  So because of the distortion that happens when I press it into the hair (I'll go into this later, jesus christ this was frustrating) I've remade the face now, pretty much from scratch, 9 times.  Yesterday was partially triumphant and partially insanely frustrating.    I'll add pictures later.  I finished the hands and arms.  They look a little blocky but they're fine and they're finished.  I made some shorts but they're sort of funny right now.

Here's a failed face...I was mad so I Billy Idoled her.


Today I had to go into work. Normally I work from home and it's great.  I have a little messenger program that is up all day long so they know I'm not fucking around.  I actually don't.  Giving me the ability to work home was the smartest thing anyone has ever done.  I work overtime anytime they need it without question or resentment.  I haven't switched companies in eight years and I'm an IT geek.  Nobody does that, unless they get to work from home.  Loyalty!  I go to the office now every two weeks on Wednesdays.  For 8 years I didn't even have to do that but after being bought out three times in the past eight years and switching bosses FIVE times in the past year, they're going to attempt to socialize me with my, ahem...'team'.   I actually love my job, or at least the part where I get to develop new stuff.  Seriously.   The puzzles that come along with coding and development is exactly what I need to  balance the creative side of my brain.  Today I started learning SAS when I was in the office and it's awesome.  However, working in an office in 2012 is total nonsense.  Working in a cubicle day after day is soul crushing, energy sucking, lifeless, pointless, boring, lonely, pathetic, shitty and the opposite of what humans need to feel on a day to day basis.   


Tonight was a mental health night.  Tomorrow I go back and try to remold the face ... or use what I have.  We'll see.  

Progress 2/10/2012

As of 1am last night:

 I added the shelf to the torso and it slumped a little though I let it sit for hours before attaching it.  It was a little nerve wracking but I was able to get it attached.  Had to turn it sideways on a cushion to flatten the shelf back out and it didn't crack, which is a good sign that it's built well.  Look ma!  No cracks!  I gave the legs another shot and failed.  I think I have to use the coil method instead of laying it out on a slab.  Legs are too long and would have to be too hard to work them properly when they're leather hard without them falling flat.  I pulled the face out of the press mould and it worked beautifully.  It was my test mould so I've got to do another one tonight.

warning:  shameless promotion day

For the first four hours I listened to the stylings of my husband's new doom metal (?I guess?) band  Jap Heron because my art studio is directly next door to the music studio in my basement.  He's playing the drums which is what I usually do so that's cool.  They're great.  Nothing recorded yet but here's the page.  http://www.facebook.com/pages/JapHerron/278785468824154?ref=ts&sk=wall

Speaking of bands, my band (along with John Barlow, Jim Birch and Vanessa Smetkowski), The Columbines (http://www.facebook.com/Columbines)  have a show on March 17th at Quenchers at 10 pm.  The show that I'm making this project for is opens the night before and is open all day on the 17th so I will be celebrating.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago Opening Event: BFA Exhibition

Fri, March 16, 7pm – 9pm  - This is the opening.

Sat, March 17, 11am - 6pm - Most artists will be there all day the next day as well.  

The show is open until April 4th.

Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor, Chicago, IL 60603 (map)

Progress 2/9/2012

2/9/2012
In the words of Ice Cube, today was a good day. 


I finished the torso with the armstumps looking alright.  I pulled out the slumping s-o-b and it still slumped so I let it air dry for a while.  I attached the other arm and filled it with some trashbags to make it so it filled out nicer.  I also added the wrinkles to the shirt.  That part was interesting.  I haven't made clothes in porcelain clay before and I had my husband stand with his hands out and took a picture.  I copied the wrinkles in his t-shirt onto the torso and voila.  This is a much better torso than the first one I made which was all flat and boring and looked like it belonged on a robot instead of a kid.  Again, rebuilding this was a good idea.

The reason the torso looks short here is because I have to build a shelf system inside of it for the shorts to sit in.  I'm firing two pieces - head/torso and shorts/legs/feet.  The shorts will slip inside the torso and I'll epoxy them together after they're fired.  So I score the shelf and the bottom of the torso, apply slip and connect.  Then I connect a wall at the bottom after I feel the shelf has hardened enough to provide the area for the shorts to slip inside.

I have clay in the press mold for the face.  I'm also working on the legs tonight.  

Progress 2/8/2012

2/8/2012

slumper!

Today I was less productive than I'd hoped.  I was pretty burned out and had a hell day at work.  It was the kind of day where someone emailed me the same question forty times  (31 for reals) and I answered the same way every time explaining that the thing she wanted doesn't exist and she just couldn't understand that sometimes you can't fucking get what you want.  Ahhh!  This is what happens when parents don't tell their children no.  Tangent over.  I did get the torso up to the neck area completed but working on the torso was no fun because though I know not to build it too high because of slumping, I kept building it too high because I was impatient and of course it slumped.  I attached one arm to the torso but that was too wet as well and caused additional slumping.  I had to wrap it and put it away because I was too frustrated.  


I made socks on top of the shoes and an unsuccessful leg that looked like the girl had polio.  I figured out that you have to wrap the clay around a cardboard tube and let it harden over night before you start to work it. 


Though no one has every accused me of being a clean freak, cleaning up after each thing you work on is really important.  If you don't clean the floor, you're stepping on crunchy clay and there are trash bags everywhere. If you don't clean your tools then you're grabbing tools that have hardened clay nuggets stuck to them that will destroy the details and get into your wet clay.  I dust the shelves, sweep the floor, wipe down the counters, and do a quick wet mop every time I switch to a new thing.  I'm probably doing this five times a session.


The studio feels like home now but it needs to be purged of a bunch of crap that we don't really use.  When I make projects of whatever kind (sewing, ceramics, painting, jewelry, photography, printmaking, booking making, etc...) I tend to buy way too many supplies so I don't run out in the middle of the project.  My dad is the guy who has pallets of diet coke in his basement so he doesn't run out so I guess that's where I get it.  The supplies have built up over the years and I have a surplus of fabric/fauxfur/plea-leather/ink/canvases....  I have a Bissel 67 enlarger in the corner of the studio taking up a ton of room that hasn't been used for 8 years.  After this week I'm going to figure out what we will realistically use and give the rest to Wishcraft (awesome kid's art studio!) and sell the enlarger.  


tomorrow will be a better day

Progress 2/7/2012

2/8/2012
...after the advice from the instructor to mould only the face and rebuild the rest

It went from this

to this

I went home and cut the thing in half.  I thought I could maybe recast the entire front but in rethinking it, he's right.  Plus, I didn't really like the texture of the shirt or the shape of the chest.  My kid says, "Ooh!  You get a do - over!" which actually was pretty great in retrospect because I didn't really like how smooth and robotic the torso looked.  I'd gone to Dick Blick and gotten the Rub-R-Mold and what I'd calculated to be enough plaster just in case the Rub-R-Mold wouldn't work and I realized I'd calculated for only the head, not for the entire mould.  My husband was nice enough to  go out and get me more plaster for me Monday night.  He's pretty great.

First thing in the morning before work on Tuesday I made (a huge mess) the plaster to pour into the mould.  If you've ever worked with plaster you know this shit is horrible.  It's terrible for your respiratory system - I had an respiratory infection that lasted two months from plaster last year.  It's ridiculously messy, hardens too quickly (even if you retard the process), is super heavy, and god forbid if you don't get the lumps out or let it sit too long or too little before stirring,  and bubbles are always a problem too.  So I sifted through the dry plaster quickly with my hands and thought I'd gotten most of the lumps out.  I measured everything very carefully on the food scale, made sure the water was 70 degrees, prepared a water bath for my hands and tools afterwards so I wouldn't destroy the sink and had my stirrer ready.  I started sifting the plaster into the water with my hands (never do the opposite!) and realized I'd done a terrible job getting the lumps out, which is a huge problem.  Since the plaster hardens so quickly after mixing I had to keep sifting it into the water or start from scratch.  After waiting two minutes (necessary) I stuck my hand into the bucket to try to get the lumps out...nope, they're staying.  There are way too many lumps!  The bucket I thought was plenty big enough was actually EXACTLY big enough to hold the plaster and water so when I stuck my hand in the plaster was all sloshing over the sides.  I realized I'd have to get a colander from upstairs to use to sift the wet and quickly drying plaster into the mould and ran up to get it getting plaster on everything in my wake.  I called to my husband for help.  "Please come down and help me, right now!" He held the colander while I poured the plaster in but it was way too lumpy so it clogged the colander.  I ended up just coating the face with non-lumpy plaster and it took so long that I realized it was now or never and poured the entire bucket and all of the plaster came out - plop.    It made it into the mold but of course splashed everywhere.    Moral to the story is GET THE LUMPS OUT.  I'm buying a sifter immediately. 

Sexy finished mould

 I crossed my fingers and started work for the day.   I made the mould of clay in a box instead of the normal masonite walls because I didn't feel like making a set of walls.  Next time I will be using clamps and walls.

Eight hours later I started to peel away the sides. 









 Flipped it over and the head was stuck.  I started digging it out while calculating how long it took me to make the face because I thought I'd have to remake the entire thing.

    It finally popped out.  Whew!

I made some arms like this:

1. Roll it out.  2.Wrap around dowel.

 3.Score and slip. 4.Connect.

    

5. Make it look like an arm.

I made some shoes too.  This part was the most fun, though it was pretty late when I started.

 Roughed out converse:

Finished Converse:

I also built the torso but that part is super boring.  

My list for today!

Finish torso and neck.

Attach arms.  

Start on wrists and hands.

Cast face.  

Make the back of head.  

Add socks to shoes.  

One thing I've learned during this project is that when the clay is super wet, you need to have four or five things going on at a time.  So you coil another coil and put it on the torso, then you go over and work on the shoes, then you work on the hands, then you work on the arms, repeat.  That way, the clay dries a little and is strong enough not to slump, otherwise you're spending an f-load of time fixing slumping wet clay.  

Back to work. 

Progress 1/18/12 thru 2/6/12

1/18/12: I started by making sort of an armature which is just some paper covered in tinfoil covered in duct tape on a dowel.  Then I made a lollipop around the paper with clay.  Then, for eight hours I shaped the lollipop into a head shaped form.  This is not as easy as it sounds.

1/19/12

I pushed in the eye sockets and added clay to create the nasal bone which is the start of the skull.  I then added a big lump of clay to create the jaw.  I wish I'd have taken pictures of this because it takes a really long time to get the proportions right.  I didn't have it exactly right as you'll see in the next pictures.

1/20/12 

For the nose, I added three little lumps of clay, (tip and nostrils) and then made a piece of 'skin' which is just a thin flat piece of clay.  I laid the skin across the bone and cartilage and shaped it with some tools.  The nose is really fun to make.  Once I had the nose I started to notice that my jaw was too short, and my eyesockets slightly low.  For children, the eye sockets are lower, but not this low.  

Next I added a bean shaped piece of clay under the nose and shaped it into the upper lip.  The upper lip is fat, and looks much too big because you don't have the fat or muscles on the face yet.  

Added a piece of clay and shaped the lower lip.

Started adding some clay below the lower lip to make the jaw larger and more in proportion.

Added fat and muscle around the mouth and cheeks and more on the jaw.  I noticed that that the jaw was looking super masculine so I futzed around with that for a long time.

First try on  the eyes.  A little too low.  Try again.

A little higher but weirdly shaped...try again.

Too close together and super flat and weirdly shaped.  Try again. I think I remodeled the eyes 9 times in all. 

I added the ears.  Making ears is fun!

Hair!  Making hair is not as fun as making ears.

 Head on a stick.

2/5/2012:  Terrible picture but head on a torso.  

2/6/2012:

I met with my adviser after work today to figure out how I was going to make the final piece.  I was initially going to mould the thing in five different pieces in plaster (insanely time consuming), wait for the plaster to dry (takes forever and I was concerned about plaster drying), and cast in slip.  I then had to wait for the slip to dry and fire the pieces and reassemble using epoxy.  My adviser agreed that it was unrealistic.  He explained that I can't fire the original, not necessarily because of the duct tape and paper and tinfoil inside (although that would be very risky) but mostly because the inside of the head is very thick, the torso is very thin and the walls have to be of similar thickness.  I guess I knew that going in, but I thought I was going to make moulds so I really didn't worry about it.   The clay is too dry for me to hollow out now.  So he said, chop the head off right here (slashing motion across the neck) and only mold the face.  It will have to be a press mold. You have rebuild the rest (Holy shit!), and the clay has to be of  similar thickness - no thinner than 3/4 - 1" because the hands will be that thick.   Rebuild the rest...hair and back of head too?  Yes, it's too complicated to mould.  Okay!  

I thought that maybe I could use Rub-R-Mold, which is latex instead of moulding the head in plaster.   I bought some of that, but in researching it further in the moulding book, it was a bad/ risky idea.  I don't have time for mistakes or experimentation right now so I'm going with plaster. I now have two jars of latex from which I will make something fun and scary in the future.  

I went home and cut the thing in half.  I thought I could maybe recast the entire front but in rethinking it, he's right.  Plus, I didn't really like the texture of the shirt or the shape of the chest.  My kid says, "Ooh!  You get a do - over!"  That's one way to look at it.  

I also built the torso half way and built the arms and roughed out the hands and wrists.  

Also, I have to be finished by Monday in order to fire this thing in time for the show.  So I will work during the day, and make my piece after 4 and get in 9-10 hours of work T-W-Th-F.  On the weekend I will have from 8am - 2am (with 6 hours of sleep which isn't bad).  So altogether I will have around 70 hours (minus bio breaks and taking pictures and updates) to finish the project, which I'm pretty sure is enough.