No Pictures, Please

Oy, it has been slow going lately.

Friday I was in the studio all day,and felt like I got nothing done, except making a mess. The semester's schedule and work around the house have really been taking their toll.

That said, I've managed to make and mold the arrow that the "Self Portrait" figure will eventually be holding, and started some experiments with other finishes for the smaller relief figures, with an eye toward an exhibition in NYC in March.

I am going back and forth on the wisdom of working at this scale at this phase of life. I like working big, and the sense of accomplishment is fantastic, but never being finished is beginning to wear me down. As of this moment, I've still got to:

1. repair the small places where the surface coat either broke away or didn't fill
2. cast the arrow, and figure out how to attach it securely
3. re-attach part of the bow that broke off
   
4. clean up the edges and chase the surface
5. figure out how to mount it, and then do it
   
6. figure out the appropriate surface treatment, and then apply it
   

Bleh.

The Best In The World

Haven't posted in a while, but that doesn't mean I've been idle.

Spent last Friday casting the next positive in Forton MG - which is a complicated and unsatisfying process. Forton requires 4 different proportions of 4 different materials - some dry, some wet, some by lb. some by gram. It also requires fiberglass (I'm using 1.5 oz chop strand fiberglass mat) which is an unpleasant material to work with. The best analogy I can come up with it is trying to wallpaper a toilet with elmers glue and horsehair. It is an inelegant and frustrating process. Add to that the stress working with a new material - not being sure if the mixes are correct, not knowing if it's going to stick to the mold, etc. - and you get a really long and unpleasant day.

If I had written a post on Friday, you might have thought I was never going to make a sculpture again, and you would have been right. On Friday I was sure I would never do this again. Not this big. Not while teaching full time. Not with a wife and kids. Not without a major grant, or a commission, or some clear purpose, other than making myself miserable and pissing money away. Then on Wednesday I got it out of the mold, and now all is forgiven.

There is simply nothing like having a complex, multi-part, process resolve itself more or less the way you thought it would. It's incredibly addictive. It immediately makes you forget all of the frustration and heartache, and start planning your next campaign. All the anxiety and uncertainty of of the last six months is distilled into one moment, and then resolved.
Amazing.

Here's how it went down.

First of all, I bought another set of ratchet straps, and gave myself 8 anchor points inside the casting.





Once I had everything secured, and was able to lift the mold and the casting away from the table, I eased the 7 pieces of the mothermold away from the rubber mold, which was still holding tight to the rigid body of the cast. Then I slowly peeled back the rubber.

I was particularly gratified to see how raising the cast helped in the de-mold process. Figuring out how to make gravity a partner in the process, rather than an obstacle, was my own little innovation, and it worked out beautifully.







There are still miles to go - little places that need patching, etc., and I'm sure I will be cursing again before the end of it. but having this work out is a huge boost to the finish line. Huge.

Dry Run

It was a hectic day in the studio Friday, but I did manage to get a reasonable trial cast of "Self-Portrait...".

I decided that before I invested in a whole order of Forton, I'd make a trial run with something relatively simple, like Hydrostone and burlap. My hope was that the cost of days worth of labor, and a few bucks in material would be offset by the trouble spots and problems I would discover, and be able to anticipate for next time.

Here's how it went. First, I brushed in a thin coat of a Hyrdostone into the mold.


Then I added a couple of coats of burlap dipped in Hydrostone, to give the shell some strength. After a couple coats, I added these loops of sixteen gauge wire.



My hope was that the wire loops would allow me to suspend the cast from the ceiling, and pull the mold out from under it.

It almost worked according to plan. I don't have any pictures of me taking the mold away, because it turned out I really could have used an assistant. The wire worked like a champ, and for a minute the whole thing was suspended a few inches above the table, until weight of the mold overcame the structural integrity of the cast, and it started to collapse and bend. I'm hoping that stronger material, more reinforcement and more points of contact will solve that problem, and that the next one will be a keeper.

The Matter Of Morfit Vs. Plastic Relief, RESOLVED

OK. I spent a couple of days with this in my kitchen, learned to look at it without anxiety, and decided I love it. It feels like I’ve finally found the right solution for this work. Working through that problem - taking the time to follow an unfamiliar idea to it’s successful resolution, is something I’m particularly proud of.

Let's remember that these started as an offshoots of the plaster plates, were originally cast in plaster, and glued directly to the wall. The first breakthrough came when I convinced by the quietly insightful Christine Pfister that having a body of work that stuck to the wall made no practical sense as a work of art. Nobody wants to spend money on art they can’t take with them when they move.

Up until that moment, I’d felt that the pieces needed to be plaster in order to reference the decorative architectural plasters of 17th and 18th centuries. As soon as I got my head around using plastic, the possibilities exploded. Using the plastic led to the use of the nails, which created the critical space between the figures and the wall.

At this point, I was still working with the original model - that the individual figures would be combined to create narrative vignettes in the space. That was what I did at Eileen Tognini’s, for my show at Pentimenti, and at a couple of private residences this summer. The installation process worked like exactly like I’d imagined it would, but new problems presented themselves as the rubber met the road.

First, scale. I thought the installation at Pentimenti worked well, but I could see that part of its success depended on the scale of the room. Out in the larger gallery, those pieces would just disappear. Second, the pieces turned out to be more dependent on the environment than I had anticipated. Installing pieces in a couple of private homes this summer, I found that if the background color was too strong, or the lighting wasn’t right, the pieces flattened out, and the relief as lost. Third, in a larger space, the vignettes just didn’t have the same impact I’d imagined. They looked good, but they didn’t look like enough.

This frame, to my mind, solves all those problems. The frame keeps the scale manageable (duh), and I can control the color. As I mentioned in the last post, I’m no longer trying to control the light - although now it should makes more sense why I would think I needed to. Finally, the all-over composition is enough. It’s visually overwhelming in the way I always thought these pieces needed to be. I had to give up some of the narrative quality to get there, but I think that’s a good thing. In fact, I’m now thinking that the whole idea of a narrative was somehow limiting . It’s just another one example of how you have to kill your darlings - how the initial inspiration can end up being the idea you need to overcome for the piece to succeed.

Overfunction Much?

So I dragged my friend Matthew into the kitchen yesterday to see what he thought about this latest iteration. He looked at it for about 2 seconds before saying, "What's up with those lights? They're not staying, right?".

It was one of those frustrating moments when I suddenly realize that I've been laboring under some wrongheaded idée fixe. Of course those lights are not staying! Do you think I'm the kind of over-functioning control freak who would try to build the lighting into his piece? Do you think I'm the kind of idiot who would torture himself trying to find the right lamps, the right lightbulbs, and the right extension cord for such a project? Not this guy. Not anymore.

Thank you Matthew.

What Is The What

OK. This process has been killing me, but I finally got everything nailed down, glued in, and ready to go. Hung it in the kitchen this afternoon, mostly because I'm tired of being surprised by how things look outside of the studio.

I haven't got the portfolio shot of this yet, but this gives an idea of what it looks like in the space.



This whole body of work has been hard going, so it's hard to see clearly, but I think this is the last, best version. It's tricky to think of an appropriate context. It's almost flat, but then there's this intensely detailed depth on the top 1/4 inch. It's almost decorative, but the high contrast shapes against the decorator showcase colors are at odds with the the fragments of narrative, which are often violent, or unsettling. It looks like a billboard, or a poster, or an explosion at the Wedgewood factory.

I made it, but I'm not sure I know how to look at it.

In The Frame / Process Breakdown

Start of the semester, but finally able to get back in the studio on Friday.

Most of the day spent painting and finishing the frame. Hard to patient here, because I'd like to get started and see if my imagined process is going to work, but I can't do that without having everything else perfect and ready to go. Which means 4 or 5 hours of sanding, painting, and prepping before I can really get "started".

The good news is that I finally did get to put some figures down on the frame, and it works just like I thought.

First, I spray-painted all the elements with a matte white automotive primer. This has two benefits. First, it makes all the color consistent, and protects the plastic from UV light, which yellows it.



Second, it creates a stencil, which I use as a map when it comes time to register the pieces on the frame.



It's slow going, but I think I've got the system worked out, and the end is definitely in sight.

The process thus far:

1) Make original figures in Super Sculpey
2) Bake figures
3) Carve and sand baked figures
4) Mold figures
5) Cast elements in plastic (From here, each step is repeated for each casting)
6) Soak figures in TSP to remove mold release
7) Brush figures with wire bush to scuff surfaces
8) Drill multiple holes into the back of each figure to anchor the brads
9) Glue brads into holes
10) Make foam "testing wall"
11) Cover wall with craft paper
12) Demarcate projected final dimensions on craft paper
13) Compose image, punching brads through craft paper into foam wall
14) Modify, cut, and crop individual elements where necessary
15) Make frame
16) Paint frame
17) Paint figures
18) Transfer sections of figures over to auxiliary foam board
19) Cut craft paper sections
20) Using perforated craft paper as a guide, drill holes in frame
21) Glue each element into corresponding holes

Looking at it like this makes me feel incredibly clever, and totally foolish. Like I've created an elegant Rube Goldberg machine that doesn't do anything.