Walking

Today turned out great. I walked to my studio in what was unexpectedly a hot and humid afternoon for a studio visit with the director of minidutch. Lucia Fabio is really awesome, and I am looking forward to working with her for this future show there. I will be pursuing a new method of working and using up all the old supplies in my studio. Old meets new, its gonna be great, and great fun.

After we ate at The Grind, I went back to my studio to continue to work on the self portrait for the show at Northeastern, and I think its coming along great.

I am starting to believe that I may actually get my idea across. I want this piece to be about self examination. But also I want it to be about the imperfect. Some how I want the viewer to appreciate that creating something like a portrait bust comes from destroying concepts and really seeing. That even in the making process, there is a constant ebb and flow building up and tearing down: correcting. I love making this thing. I love having my mind so completely engrossed and yet so open and free. Some how I am really excited. I love that this very old fashioned discipline, the discipline I abandoned in undergrad is now really an exciting punch line to this project. I am so excited that I think I might be using a traditional craft conceptually. I just need the right title.After I worked to this point, I quit and walked home through the cool and rainy evening.

Try Try Again

I am working on the last piece for my show this summer, White Moment.

My first idea for this was to have two casts of my head, made to look like the buddha heads, looking at each other. I want this piece to have a real self contemplation quality. Well after I asked two people to help me out by casting my head, and after I sat twice to have my face and head covered in plaster gauze, and I assembled them, I realized I didn't like them. They didn't really look like each other!

So then I thought I will use one of them, and have it looking into a mirror. But the problem with that is that the plaster cast doesn't have eyes.


Which reminds me the before I moved onto this step I bought and tried to install glass eyes into the plaster head because this piece is so much about looking, but they turned out SO freaky!

So now I am on the fourth try. I am literally sculpting my self portrait in clay. I must say its really not going well, but I've only worked on it for like 6 hours so far. I once made a really stunning life like portrait bust of a model, but working on myself is much more challenging. I am using the plaster cast heads for help, but for example, while working on the eyes, I need to take off my glasses and look in a mirror, but then I can't see so well.

So I'm hoping that even if this doesn't turn out very well technically and perfectly life like, that this process of looking and examination just to make the piece will come across conceptually. The sculpted head will be cast in white bees wax and be looking into a mirror.

the fightback against “bad” public sculpture in the UK has begun

This is awesome and hilarious!