Even More Progress

Well even more progress has been made on the veil. I started carving the new mushroom clusters which will be cast in brass. Here's a picture of how they will be soldered onto the crown itself.


I also came up with a possible title for the piece. I was thinking Dance With Me, Mushroom Queen. As stated previously, this piece is based entirely on the concept of self-medication, which I have personal experience with. This entire piece has specific personal meaning to me, so feedback isn't too overly required. But appreciated, still.




See you, space cowboy....

Progress on the Mushroom Crown

Well I managed to progress a bit more on the veil today. The rest of the chasing and repousse, as well as the etching are done. I also managed to make some of the chains.


So here's a picture of the etched, pierced, chased, and drilled half next to the other half which is chased and has the resist applied with the design scribed in. I thought it was a cool shot.




This is a picture with some of the chains on the piece. The links have been hammered somewhat flat. It's my attempt at drawing a transition from the flat sheet where the holes are to the spherical beads that will make up the veil. There is exactly 80 strands of 3 chain links which will transition into the beads via tubing. There will then be 80 strands consisting of 175 beads each.




So yup.....Progress.







See you space cowboy....

Mushroom Crown

So I started my mushroom crown and made great progress. Within two days, I finished the chasing, repousse, etching, piercing, and forming for half of the crown. I also started finished the chasing and repousse for the other half. So here's a picture of the finished copper half without the mushrooms or veil on it yet.






So that's my plan for Spring break....Finish this thing, and work on the stone mask for my grant. Woohooo break.







See you space cowboy....

Some Work Done

I managed to finish about 1/3 of my veil, and I still have all next week to work on it. But while waiting for a good chunk of it to etch, I made a new Steampunk pendant influenced by a friend that I met in Texas named Heather Wobbe. She was one of the cool Steampunks that took me out to the rave.




So this necklace is called Map of the Convergence of Time. It's sterling and brass.


Now I need to take some actually decent photos of it, but an academic all-nighter has me whiped for now.


See you space cowboy.....

SNAG Conference Review

Well, I haven't really written too much on the SNAG conference as it had some slightly awkward and off-puting situations involved. It started out horribly, and had be second-guessing my decision to even go right off the bat. To let all know, Vince and I are all good. I've told the entire story of the incredibly unlucky occurances that happened leading up to the trip far too many times, so I won't go into that topic on here. It's neither here nor there, and it is in the past. If you must (which I promise, besides Vince and Amanda, no one must) talk to me about it to clear the air, feel free to approach me.

Anyway, to move on with the description of the conference itself. The first day (Wednesday), I really didn't arrive at the hotel until about 9PM, so I missed everything that day. I checked in (to a very awkward and irritating welcome) to the conference, then I went to my room where I paniced myself to sleep. The second day, my roommate Rickson Salkeld arrived. I had previously made friends with Rickson through Crafthaus where we had some great deep and intellectual conversations, which only continued at SNAG. We went on a gallery hop leading up to the exhibition in motion. We went to the Menil Collection, which I thought was the most impressive. There was a massive collection of surrealist work from Dali, Picasso, Tanguy, Lam, Magritte, and loads more. It was amazing to see the ranging works of a style that I find so influencial. They also had a small room called Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision. This room contained many odd items that were owned and/or collected by surrealist artists.



This room was amazing to see because of the collection of native masks, as well as French theatre masks.

From there, we went to the exhibition in motion which Rickson was part of. This was very entertaining, though I wasn't the largest fan of the space used. The Houston Museum of Fine arts is absolutely beautiful, but it wasn't as visually impressive of the Exhibition in Motion in Philadelphia. But considering how unconventional this type of event is, it worked out fine.





After that, I ended up at dinner with Rickson, Brigitte Martin, Michelle Pajak-Reynolds, and some others. It was a great night with a lot of philosphical artistic talk. It became one of the most perspective-changing nights of the trip.

The next couple of days, I went to every lecture, demo (makume), and presentation that I could get to. I also met up with a local friend of mine from high school for lunch. On the final night of the trip, we had the normal final dinner. Passing the torch, raffles, dinner, dressing nice, socializing, dancing, drinking....Not my things. I ended up outside chatting with a friend that I made days earlier named Phrog. Phrog is a tattoo artist from Austin. After talking for a few minutes, his friends (also attendees of the conference) called and wanted to have some drinks. They invited me to join, so I did.

It ended up that Phrog and his friends were Steampunk jewelers. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a practicioner of the Steampunk style, and have actually been the recipient of a grant to study Steampunk metals. I ended up at an underground Steampunk rave! That was great for my research. So I'm going to end this post with some pictures from the rave.

See you space cowboy......

Casting Mushrooms

Well, I started working on my next piece.


This piece was greatly inspired by many influences that I took notice of during my trip to Texas for the SNAG conference. One of the most influencial presentations that I saw was Kathleen Browne's presentation on Hyperpractice.



So this piece, to fill the assignment of sound ornamentation, is a piece for self medication. It is an Arabian-style veil that will have hundreds of individual strands of beads. Around the crown of the veil will be many many many little bunches of cast brass mushrooms, all different from eachother.


Here's some pictures of the work in progress. I have included some rather uninteresting images purely for the fact that I've had several people ask me to explain the process of lost wax casting, and figured that I'd include a little more images than normal.



Five of the mushrooms sprewed.



Five of the mushrooms sprewed.




All of the lovely math to convert the weight of the wax over to bronze.




The mushrooms in the flask.





See you space cowboy......

Me in Houston

Well, I just arrived home safely from my trip to the annual SNAG conference which was in Houston, TX this year. I have to say that this year was far more inspiring and educational for me than last. That's not to say that Philadelphia wasn't great, but I was far more open to to the information being presented to me. I spent some good time with Rickson Salkeld, had some great talked with Brigitte Martin, and experienced some great parties. Really, I have to thank Ryan, Heather, Phrog, Heather, and Erika for probably one of the funnest nights that I've had ina long time. I plan on bringing the massive amounts of notes and information that I picked up home and applying it to my work.