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.

last semester

Ceramic Armadillo, 7"x20"(not including tail)x7", soda fired stoneware, cloth. 2010

Snake that Swallowed a TV, 16"x48"x36", polystyrene foam, aquaresin, fabric, TV. 2010.

I need to redo this one/not as happy as I could be with it. 

Little Snake/Television Head, 5"x24"24", polysyrene foam, aquaresin, spray paint, littlest TV. 2010.

My cutest sculpture to date.

Immobilizer/mobilizer, 9"x15"x25", steel, spray paint, bolts, spring, padlock. 2010.

 

Ghost Tree/Albino RGB, 78"x36"x30", wood, chicken wire, canvas, paste. 2010.

These are long exposures - there were red, green, and blue lights inside of the tree hooked up to a sound organ so when there was noise certain colors would flash. All three colors make white when combined so the light just looks white in the pictures.

        

Decapitated Mammoth Head, 60"x84"x60", fabric, polystyrene foam, cardboard, duct tape. 2010.

get someone really to pull the wool with you, wooly bully

Circa my second sophomore year in college: kickin' it back in 2008.

 Wooly Mammoth, it was 7' tall, fabric, cardboard, duct tape, and a coupla blown glass eyes thanks to Jon.

 The nose holes: by far the best part.  They go real deep.

 I had to move it twice and eventually it just couldn't hold itself up. The fact that the internal structure was entirely cardboard and duct tape might have had something to do with it. Fortunately it's better art that way.

I hear people dig process shots.

I threw away the body just because it's a tough thing to store, and stored the head and skins in the crawl space in my mom's basement aka my personal gallery.  This semester I whipped/lugged them out and I'm planning on making some fabric flesh and bone gore at the neck and giving it full tusks.  The first step was to laminate pink foam, which rumor has it is toxic.  I thought this step was going to be more difficult than it actually was.

And now back to the present:  

 I rounded them out with a saw and a rasp which went incredibly quickly.

Now the pieces are covered in white duct tape (that's right, the classy kind) just because that's how I roll, real shotty like that.  I'm going to cover them in stitched fabric like the rest of the mammoth, but I was just concerned that the pink would be visible through the thin fabric and honestly I'm just real into duct tape.  I have each tusk in two pieces because it would be impossible to transport otherwise.  I'm really wising up with the whole transporting deal.

bison model

I made this about a month or three weeks ago and couldn't find it for forever.  That's because I'm an idiot and didn't know where things ended up after they were bisqued AND it was on the wayy top shelf so there's no way I could've seen it anyways.

This is a model for a really large piece that I'm going to make next semester; I'd go on about it but it'd take forever and I'd get real amped and not want to work on what I have to work on this semester. Anyways, you have to make biggish clay things hollow, so I sliced this one into about eight sections and traced each section before putting them back together so I could know what a bison looks like at various cross sections.  This guy is probably ten to twelve inches tall and pretty heavy.

I'm going to glaze it and I'm still deciding if I want it to be blue or black.

clay class and my dillo

I'm taking a class this semester for people who have never touched clay before in their lives.  My teacher's a real cool guy and thinks that making vessels is as lame as I think making vessels is, so I'm making an armadillo.  I just finished all the parts today and they are getting bisqued real soon(!!!), which is exciting, because then I am less likely to accidentally break them!  I plan on soda firing them and hinging/tying them together with some sort of fabric.  I was initially thinking leather, but now I think I want to do something more fibrous and itchy like burlap or tweed or something, but how they look soda fired will probably determine the material I use.

 Biggish pieces have to be hollow so they don't explode when they are fired.  I hollowed the head out through the ear and nose holes.  It made me feel like an Egyptian.

 A back leg getting fanned off with Ben's mugs.

 It took me probably twelve hours to make two back legs, just so you begin to understand how time consuming this was.

Just finished the tail a few hours ago.

There are also middle bands that are in the kiln now that I couldn't get pictures of.

I messed up a couple of times, and this was one of them so I carved an armadillo into it to do a test soda firing run.

my free ticket to burning man

The camel got a final resting place! Indefinitely! It is my most moved sculpture and also my most difficult to move sculpture.  It's been in a total of six different locations.  Each front leg and the two backlegs and butt are detachable/held on by bolts.  Ideally, this guy takes about 15 minutes to put up with the help of two or three other very very very nice people, or realistically, around a half hour.

Camel Toe, 9'x12'x4', pantyhose, scrap wood, screws, bolts, rope, and a random pencil/tasty spoon. 2010. At the lower level of the Tower building of Mass Art, visible from Huntington Ave (currently and forever?).

 At the Transportation Building in downtown Boston

 At Copley Mall in exotic plants.

At the very first show in the new Student Life Gallery in Mass Art.

Being a bad ass and obstructing proper egress in the hallway of Mass Art cause that thing definitely wasn't about to fit in my studio.

This post should end with a picture of it in the back of a pickup truck, but unfortunately that photo got lost and I'm still a little upset about it mostly because the pick up truck croaked, and it was a good one (the pickup truck ((and I guess the photo))).

Manifest's International Drawing Annual competition shits money

I will kick myself if I don't submit at least one something good to the Inda 6 Annual Competition. Last year's winners had some really tight drawings, which only serve to intimidate me and to convince myself that it's not even worth trying.  I wish all the preexisting pieces that I have weren't considered more paintings than drawings.  In addition to making a drawing specifically for this competition (if reviews and Xmas traveling allow me), I might submit a series of animals shitting money that I paintdrew and wheat-pasted up last spring:

Dog Shitting Money, mutt dog sized (I didn't get the dimensions, shoot me)or about 36" tall, ink, conte, and charcoal on paper with screen-printed moneyturds, 2010.  This one was on the wall surrounding the MSPCA.  They really have their act together; it was removed within 12 hours.

 Coon Shitting Money, coon sized or about 24" tall, ink, conte, white gauche and charcoal on paper with screen-printed moneyturds, 2010.  It was on South Huntington, near the South Huntington and Huntington intersection. Some weenie ripped this one's butt off within 12 hours of me putting it up.  Other than that, this was the longest survivor: about two months.

Fox Shitting Money, fox sized or about 24" tall, ink, conte, and charcoal on paper with screen-printed moneyturds, 2010.  This one was at the top of the hill on Fisher Ave.  I put it up in the middle of the day with no problems, because college cops would roll by that area literally every five minutes at night.