Summer Work

New temporary studio!

5'x8' canvas with acrylic

5'x5' canvas with acrylic

I still see head and bodies as two different concepts.

Come to a Head, The Final Show

Here I have my final group of photos. First is the cover of the card for my show and following it are three photos of the gallery from the opening and then four photos of the gallery before the show. I tried to get as many angles as possible to give a good sense of the set up of the space. I think the reception went very well and the set up and lighting was better then I thought it could have been. Over all I would say mission success.

Presentation Details

Here I've taken a photograph of almost every piece from the show before the opening happened. The first two photos below are of the two VBH's. In the first I am posing with the first VBH. I have placed lights inside of it and left on of the back panels of the head off so people can entire it as a space.

Next I photographed the VBF which I added supports to so that the divided sections can stand on their own. This created an interesting space with a surface that the viewer needed to piece together in their head. Further you cannot walk straight up to the piece because there are miniature heads expanding out from the spaces in between the divided panels that prevent you from moving in close.

Below are detail shots of the four miniature heads that I casted multiple times using rubber molds. There is a baby, an old woman, a man, and a young woman. It was important to me that all the elements of this piece were white. This is partial because I have a strong relationship with the plaster I have been working with through all of the pieces for this body of work and partially because I relate the piece to the white paper that I sketched the idea on so many times. I think the purity of the color white compliments the VBF's expression with the closed eyes and the movement of the miniature heads on the dark carpet.



I am very excited that I was able to get a picture of my smiling aquatic head with its inspiration. As yo can see I have added much more color to the sculpture to vary the hues of turquoise and blue.
I included my sculpture clothes on the show because they became artworks in and of themselves from use and plaster build up. I added a casted pair of my feet next to my shoes to continue with the idea that everything in my show have been molded and cast.
Lastly I took photos of the 6 small head that I made. I also cast these with plaster from a rubber mold. i made several versions because choosing these final pieces. The shelves that the heads sit on are very important because they establish a space that each head lives in.

The lift gate was too short to hold the crate and other moving adventures

The series of photographs below show the delivery and assembly of the two casts of the VBH. This did not happen all at once but other the course of about a month. The first photo below was about a month ago when the first crate arrived. It shows the 6'x6' crate sitting as far out on the lift gate as it would go without falling off. This was during thanksgiving break so there was only one other person in the Art Barn who could come out to help the truck driver and I move the crate off of the truck. This was done by having the truck driver and my friend from the Art Barn hold up the back end of the crate so it wouldn't topple off the lift gate while I lowered the lift gate down onto the ground. I was very worried that the crate would fall and crush them, but we managed it would injury.

Also the graphics on the outside of the crates was a complete surprise to me. My father had added those onto the crates before shipping them off. It was very amusing to see the stencil of the VBH and the 'warning' on the outside of the crates. It made the crate a sort of art piece in and of themselves which I loved.

For the arrival of the second crate I asked the moving company to bring two movers to help get the crate off the truck. Only later did I discover that the College's Physical Plant owns a fork lift and so I asked them to move the crates away from the road where one was block parking space and onto the grass.

The last three pictures here are of the Five College Movers that I hired to help me moved the pieces of the VBH's out of the crates, into the gallery, and then assemble them. With their truck and my car we were able to transport the pieces across campus in just a few trips.

This last picture is hilarious. It shows one of the movers adding bolts between two of the pieces of the cast to hold it together. We had to wear heavy gloves when working with the cast pieces because the edges and the inside of the pieces had exposed fiberglass and we didn't want to cut our hands. After he had bolted in the last panel of that VBH he was stuck inside and we had to lift up the sculpture to let him crawl out.

My Back Hurts

From bottom to top I have a series of photos here that show me breaking away the mold pieces from the VBF. This task took more then the 11 hours it took to mold the sculpture, but I did not count. The final photograph directly below is my absolute favorite so far. It show the ten pieces of the mold sitting against the wall where the VBF used to me and my feet in the foreground showing the plaster and dirt on my pants and shoes from all of the hard work. It was very satisfying.

11 hours of mould making

In the same way that I made the waste mold for the smiling head I made the piece mold for the VBF. It started at the bottom with dividing the sculpture into pieces with shim walls, then adding a couple of layers of plaster, then adding burlap and wooden supports. I did not add a layer of slip brush strokes because I want to leave the mold in tact so there is no reason for me to want to separate the burlap layer from the plaster layer. The entire process took 11 hours, much longer then the smiling head, because the scale of the piece added to the time and the labor.

VBF final clay piece

Here I have taken three photos, from oldest to newest, of the final stages of modeling. the photo directly below is the final shape of the VBF. Again you can see the photos I have taken of myself to help guide the sculpting. I decided to cut the face off right above the eyebrows for a number of reasons. Ideally if I had had move time I would have made the piece mold of the sculpture the way it is and then continued to add clay to build up the forehead and then make a second piece mold so that I could experiment with two variations.