Self-Surgery

Got whacked with the desire to work into a new piece tonight and since I'm in dire need of self-care, it started along the path of being somewhat therapeutic and introspective.

I've had the idea of a figure with a heart cut out in my head for awhile. When I still had a studio space, I had the idea for a full sized human cut-out from butcher paper tacked to the wall with a 3D heart-shaped box of some sort in the appropriate place that I could place things in. I can't make boxes, heart shaped or otherwise, so it never came about, but the idea stuck in my head.

I played around with the human form as a physical space for inscription and incision awhile ago in this post, "Parts of Me Were Broken Long Before My Heart Came Into." I'm worried I'll run into the same roadblock with this one as I did with that one, shading large expanses of the human form that isn't the face or hands. I never actually finished that piece.

Some initial sketches and thumbnails for the idea. I'm trying to find my balance between exaggerated and realistic here and it's a struggle.

Work-in-Progress Sundays: Artificial Tears

This is the piece I was doing all those blue enamel samples for. It's very much in-progress, but I thought I'd toss up some shots of how it's going. I'm still working out some design aspects of it, which is why I haven't enameled any of it yet. (Planning and thinking before rushing ahead- I'm learning!)

I like the look of it thus far, but I'm debating adding little droplets with jump rings to the bottom of the wavy pieces. I put one on the far right to see how it looked (you can see it more in the picture below). One of the nice things about enamel is that I can cover any holes I drill, so I can do a fair amount of physically designing before I fire the piece.

I'm not thrilled with how it hangs on my face, and I'm considering attaching a chain to the nose chain that would go up and over my head, then attach to the two side chains in the back. I'm tempted to get all chain-design happy like I did with my last mask, but I also want to make sure this piece stands on its own apart from that one. I also need a new MANNEQUIN or other cunning display method, which is why I'm saving this one for next weeks critique as opposed to showing it this week. Time to whack the idea tree again.

Feedback, particularly on the hanging tear drops, gratefully appreciated.

Parts of me were broken long before my heart came into it

I came home from a midnight showing of Inglourious Basterds last night (SO FUCKING WORTH IT GO SEE BRAD PITT KILL NAAAAATZIS RIGHT THE HELL NOW), and I was so hyped on alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and the usual stimulants that keep me up through midnight movies that I didn't get to sleep until 6 AM. So I started to work into this piece, which I've been rolling around my head since I finished the pedestal one from yesterday. I'm going to have a jagged cut bisecting her chest, possibly some reference to a heart around it, and the title that I'm working under is "Parts of me were broken long before my heart came into it". It's a therapy piece (like, oh, everything else I do), but I'm trying to strike a balance between too needlessly introspective and making work that's appealing to a wider audience.

There is a lot of shading that needs to be done on the chest, and I am not looking forward to it because outside of faces, my ability to shade figures is pretty useless without naked bodies in front of me.

I've been living in the print studio 9-5 (or later if Judy locks me in) most every day this week, so working in chalk pastels was a nice break. My four layer screenprint and letterpress assignment is three layers away from done, and I'm wrapping that tomorrow, hopefully. The fruits of my inky labor are to come.