A friend let me borrow his amazing camera and now I have the closest I'll ever get to professional photos of my bison.  These were taken at the Ann Marie Sculpture Garden and Art Center in Dowell, Maryland.  That space has weddings in it every now and then, and rumor has it that some drunk bachelor rode my bison.. and it survived!  After these photos were taken it was moved/squeezed into a storage space in Philadelphia.  Hopefully I'll be able to get it into a couple of shows before the monthly payments of the space way me down.

 

 

Late Night Yard Sale Flier

 

Late Night Yard Sale Flier, 11"x17", sharpie, 2011.

Unfortunately, this yard sale was pretty much a bust because it rained the whole day and night, it sure as hell wasn't because it wasn't well advertised (my friend and I put up 37)!

 

THE BIG AMERICAN BISON INTO THE AMERICAN RAM VAN CRAM

I submitted my bison model to the show Supersize: Bigger is Better? at the Ann Marie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center in Dowell, MD a few months ago.  It got accepted and the whole cramming and uncramming process led me to believe that the answer to the question proposed in the show title is: no.  My boyfriend and I drove the bison to southern Maryland, camped in Virginia (by that I mean slept outside for about 4 hours on some gravel in a national park) and then spent a few hours the next day unloading the bison and reassembling it with the help of a couple more nice people.  The sculpture garden is incredible; the Southernish folk that run the place are REALLY nice; there is a massive indoor gallery; and the whole thing pretty much reminded me of the deCordova Sculpture Park in MA.

The front half of the bison just casually on the sidewalk with a couple of my unpaid slave workers friends.

We ended up having to break a little something off to actually fit it in there, but hey that's no skin off my back since the fur was going to cover that part anyways! you gotta skimp somewhere.

I got to ride 11 hours with an iron horn 2 inches from my face!  Didn't once slam my head into that thing! ;)

Once the bison was crammed in there, there wasn't much room for anything else, including getting out of the van.

done done and DONE

My review lasted 15 minutes (it's supposed to be 1 hour) because all of my reviewers said "This is amazing. I have nothing else to say" AND I won the Helen Blaire Crosbie award aka $1000 AND I can now be called a college graduate.

American Bison/Prairie House, 76"x39"x130", red oak, cast iron, handmade felt, 2011.

actual bison in progress

SICK CUSTOM A-FRAME

I kept the bison undercover in the woodshop for the entirety of its construction.  This is a shot of it's shoddy neck and head construction that wouldn't be visible. 

Each student is allowed 6 cubic feet in the senior show.  The bison turned out to be 3.5' x11' and one of the gallery people thought it was too big.  It did get in the show and my convincing footprint/space holder probably explains why........

Yeahhhh huge gallery mess!  I got the bison in there at around 5pm and finished assembling it by 8 am the next day and only because two of my friends stayed up the entire night helping me apply the "finish" (feed n wax and dirty metal shop rag) and putting on the felt.  I used old memory foam to bulk out and shape the head. Half of it had the finish on it at this point.

one of the fourteen bison cross section drawings

Evidence that art students still sometimes(very rarely) use skills that plain ol' regular college students use.  This is the tallest/widest/most complex cross section drawing out of the whole bison and also bears the most weight.  All the measurements of the drawing were multiplied by 5.3.  This drawing is about 15" tall so this cross section is actually about 6'5".

blanco buffalo

The finished model.

American Bison Model, 14.5"x22", 1/8" bass and balsa wood, uncarded felt, wax and a whole lotta superglue, 2011.

bison model

The steps of building a model of a 6.5'x11' timber framed bison I'm going to make this semester.  It will be half covered in uncarded felt with cast bronze eyes, horns, hooves, nose and mouth.

I accidentally superglued my lips and tongue for the first time in my life while making this model.

The first time I made the neck I spaced it wrong and it ended up too long, so I had to tear the whole thing off and remake the sections to be asymmetrical like they actually would be.  Please note my superior clamping method.

The naked model with a professional backdrop.

I finally got around to taking good photographs of Wrist Deep over a year after I made it on my last day of it being in my possession.  I had to give it up to the MassArt annual auction on Friday.

silverback from this time last year

I finally got photoshop and just now got around to copy and pasting the two halves of this together.

probably 60" tall, ink, charcoal, conte, gauche, 2010.

potluck/walk-through/open house poster

I guess you could say this was commissioned to my by the infamous Laura Brown for some event that sculpture is having at Mass Art some time in February.  It also works out that there's a black and white show coming up really soon that I could try to get this in.  For that show, I think I'm going to draw a herd of subs/hoagies running away in the background.  I've never drawn in this style before and I really like it although it takes forever.  

21"x17", 2011.

frame-jobs

 This was a Christmas present for someone who's really into how expensive plywood has the knots removed and replaced with football-shaped stronger wood inserts.

Knot Dog, 13"x9", ink and watercolor, almost 2011.

THEN I got two pieces framed by Dina at Framers Workshop in Brookline.  It was the best deal ever and probably the most impressive frame job I've ever seen.  I drew the dog picture and left probably 1/8" of paper on two sides and nothing was cut off. 

There's some CRAZY router business going on in this frame.

as domestic as I get: curtains, car dealership flags, and 3-fingered mitten liners

I made curtains and car dealership flags out of the cheapest wool known to man for a loft over my winter vacation.

 

I also made liners for $5 leather and canvas three-fingered mittens out of a shrunken aka real dense sweater.  I sort of just traced the 3 different pieces of the mitten onto paper and got a pattern for free.  One of these days I'm going to go to the Garment District and get a ton of dollar/pound sweaters and cut 'em up and make myself some three-fingered mittens - the most logical style of hand accessories. 

usa ram van

At least a good eight months ago a pinky-swear was made that I would be responsible for putting an American flag on the hood of a baby blue Ford Ranger pick-up truck and the other pinky involved in the deal would be responsible for putting a couch in the back of said pick-up truck and bringing me and others to a drive-in move theater.  Both of these promises were to be accomplished by the end of the summer. The pinky swear fell through and the truck croaked, but I finally sort of did my side of the deal by making a stencil for the back of the Ram Van Ranger-replacement.  Unfortunately all drive-in movie theaters close in September and aren't open again until April so it looks like the other party/pinky is going to have to live in misery until spring and the other half of the deal actually happens.

"That's ill" - random guy at a really cheap gas station.

wrist deep!

In December I submitted this to the annual juried auction at Mass Art and it got accepted.  The starting price is going to be $1,200.  It was the only piece I had at the time that wasn't massive.  I get 50% of what it sells for, and the other half goes to the school.  This puppy won got a Best in Show award in the All School Show last year and is really popular with moms.  It took me probably three straight months to make.

Wrist Deep, 36"x20"x24", fabric, zippers, wood, chicken wire, shopping bags, tape. 2009.