Marquis de Sade collar

One of these days I'll stop using that Marquis de Sade quote as my fall-back inspiration, but for this collar I threw together in class over the past 2 days, I think it's fairly appropriate. One of my classmates made this bad-ASS pierced animal skull choker for our cold joining sample and it made it realize that I all I want in life (or at least in metal shop) is to make huge, constraining, mildly uncomfortable pseudo-BDSM-esque collars.

I had a much easier time with the jump rings and I actually spent most of our class discussion quietly joining them into a chain with pliers- like knitting, but sooo much cooler. I also used a patina for the first time! And it promptly rubbed off all over my neck as soon as I put it on. But it looks hella cool.

I did liver of sulfur on the plates, and ferric nitrate on the jump rings, which was an exciting experiment in making tiny things very hot very quickly

I don't have much artistic thought to attach to this piece- I like collars, I like collars I put on myself, I like making impractical accessories. This was mostly a practice run to get a feel for this shape and size on my neck.

Slightly shaky shot of the back of my neck- the chain holds it on pretty nicely, despite a very simplified clasp. The bright spots up at the top are my nape piercing.

Whee collars! Next step- fixing the patina so it doesn't turn my neck black and blue (not that that's weird, but with acro training I don't need any extra bruising in odd places).

Sun Eye

My second technical sample for class- soldering a ring to a sheet of metal. You can just see the ring under the larger sawn-off bit of pipe I soldered around it.

The soldering is pretty shitacular (and oh god, when I tried to sand off the excess I nearly dislodged the thin gauge ring so I barely cleaned up the pipe part because I sure as hell didn't want to try to solder THAT mess all over again), but I had fun sawing it out and sanding the points real f'n sharp.

I also had a rough time shining it up because it's all weird angles. I want to do patinas soooo badly, I can't freaking wait to start them next week. I'd also like to figure out some way to attach it to my head a bit more permanently. Drilling a hole and using elastic isn't complicated or weird enough for me- any ideas?

I've had eye and face accouterments rolling around in my art-brain since I started metal working- the impracticality and costuming-like aspects appeals to me along with the artistic implications of disguise, hiding, ect. I started work on a mask today that'll incorporate all my cold joining technical assignments with flanges that attach the eyes to a nose piece, rivets creating movable accents on the top and sides, and jump rings dangling tears from the bottom. Here's hoping I don't nearly kill myself on the drill doing it.

Letterpress assignment (with apologies to Neil Gaiman)

Letterpress is easily the most frustrating way to have fun in the printmaking studio. It requires an obnoxious application of math, forcing your brain to read upside down and backwards, and in my case, cheating shamelessly when Judy wasn't looking to haphazardly shim my type into the press with tiny bits of wood and metal. It's funny- to make something look messy and uneven takes about three times the energy and calculation than it would to make it look neat and even. (unless you decide to just accept that your professor is going to call you out during critique for your godawfully wrong press set-up and cheat, like I did)

The piece up there is the first rough on newsprint that came out like I wanted- when I finish overlaying the screenprinted speech bubble I want on there in the studio, I'll bring home my finished babies and show them to the world, and sling 'em up on my etsy shop.

The whole process- EVEN WITH CHEATING- took me eight straight hours in the studio, running on a cup of coffee and an orange. I'm so bad at remembering to eat when I work in the print dungeon at school, and my bestie who works at the nearest cafe isn't my bestie anymore, so no more surprise food deliveries (that kid seriously kept me alive on more than one marathon printing occasion last year, bless their considerate heart). Life as a printmonkey ain't easy, and I'm off to the studio all day again today as soon as I hit publish on this.

Oly Type

Homework from my summer printmaking design class- create typographically diverse alphabet from local signage. Olympia is a stupidly easy town to do this in- it only took me 15 minutes taking pictures downtown to get all these typefaces. And I left a bunch out because I didn't have time to go into all the alleys and hunt down my favorite murals.

(Props to any Oly folks who can identify where I got more than half of these from).