Crystal Head!

Ok! So I posted images of a steel crystal a while back, which resulted in my first metals project, the concept being a wall, and the produce being a cluster of crystals. Unfortunately that project lacked a lot of ME, meaning, my aesthetic, and I really didn't want to lose the crystal form so I decided to try to engage my aesthetic into these objects.

In my previous post about the altered book, there is an image of a crystal head. When beginning this metals project, the concept this time needing to relate to tower, I looked back to the image created in my altered book and decided to turn my crystal structures into crystal masks. I adopted the body suit used by my rock heads and created this piece of wearable, sculptural art!

There was a performance involved, related to a mythology I created about the crystal heads.


The mythology describes the crystal heads as underground dwellers who fantasize about what exists above their caves. They imagine themselves at the bottom of a tower of layers, and decide to explore the worlds above them. They dig through many different layers and eventually reach the surface of the Earth.

However, the crystal heads don't realize that the surface of the Earth is the last accessible layer; they look up and believe the next attainable layer is the blue layer above (the sky). Seeing the next layer above them, the crystal heads climb trees, mountains, and buildings, trying to reach the blue layer.

Eventually the crystal heads are defeated by gravity and many of them fall from their peeks and die on their impacts into earth's surface.

The tower desired by the rock heads suggests the undefined tower. While most towers are expected to have a peek, the idea of the undefined tower reflects the perception of the tower's audience. To us, the surface of the Earth would be the peek of the tower for the crystal heads, however without knowing the limitations of Earth, the crystal heads believed there to be more layers and a peek beyond the surface. And in their own sense it's true; there are layers beyond Earth's surface, but those layers are dependent on the viewer to be defined.

The perfornace was really silly. I'll try to upload the bit of video I have from it tomorrow night. For now, enjoy all these images I have!

Rock Head as it was meant to be!

I finally made the gold body suit that was intended to accompany my rock head!

Last night I made this golden form-fitting onesie for a performance in my metals class. The metals project, which involved a crystal-headed creature, adopted the golden body from my previously mentioned rock headed guys. Both the crystals and rocks have similar creation characteristics, so it made sense for them to share the same type of body.

Here's my rock heads sporting the golden skin!

Field Guide to Crystals!

A Field Guide to Crystals
Soon to be distributed!

In response to my altered book, I decided to take the information that I've been working with (like this information posted earlier!) and present it to an audience outside of the classroom. I made a total of six booklets titled Field Guide to Crystals; three about contact twins and the other three about penetration twins. They were printed on Vellum and due to expenses, I couldn't print more than six.

Each booklet has a front and back cover, title page introducing the crystal type and creature I associate it with, infromation sheet, and two DIY crystal paper cutouts. The paper cutouts come with instructions on how to assemble the given crystal structures (either contact or penetration crystals can be created with the cutout).

I'm really curious to see the response I get when putting these out for people to stumble upon. The day I distribute them, I'll create another post in order to encourage anyone who finds one and searches for my blog (which is listed on the back of the booklet) to respond and let me know they found the booklet and what their thoughts about it were! I'm looking for an out of critique response, and see what and how a general audience views my work.

I hope to present more work publicly, but for now this will be my test run!

More booklet images,

Altered Book; Crystals!

For my sketchbook class we were assigned to alter a book, and then use our resulted project to expand upon the content of our alterations into a new project of our own likings.

The book I chose to alter was an old children's picture book about a monkey named Pete. Honestly, I totally ignored the content of the book, and more so focused on the structure of the book. I looked at the book as a landscape of fractals, relating to the crystal forms I've become interested in, and used each plane (a two page spread) to paste images of crystals, creatures, and other geometric forms relating to my research in crystals.

The resulting series of images inspired the next project I'll be posting, which takes the information I

experimented with visually in my altered book and refines it to a more user friendly structure.

Here are a few of the pages that I thought were most successful,

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Cilantro Lemon Cashew Olive Oil Carrot thing that was good!

I don't remember exactly what I put it in, but I blended it all in the magic bullet and it was delicious! It's mostly carrots, olive oil, cilantro, lemon, and cashews, with a bit of nutritional yeast, paprika, braggs, and I'm not sure what else.

Lunch!

Kind of a lame post, but it just looked so goooooood!
Peanut butter and Jelly, strawberries, orange slices, and apple sauce.

Shed contribution in progress!

This past weekend, while taking photos of Mel and Max in the rock head masks, I got to paint a little bit of Max's shed! Mel and I both contributed to Max's family shed which is covered in paintings by friends and family. I didn't finish my painting, but I'll definitely be back again to work on it some more. Max and his parents saw my creation myths post and I thought I would paint the monoliths and a rock carrier for them. ;-D

Cardboard caterpillar automaton!

This was a project done last semester where the requirement was to work with cardboard. I decided to attempt to create an automaton, which is self-operating mechanical toy. I was really interested in Alexander Calder's pull toys and circus, and the basis of my work for that class dealt with play and interaction.

It took a little toying around with before I got the mechanics right, but here it is! I think it was really successful for what I was wanting out of this project. I made something functional! It's entirely constructed with cardboard with the exception of the little sticks that support the caterpillar's segments (they are wooden dowel rods covered in cardboard) and the adhesive materials, which were glue and tape.

Here's a video of the caterpillar in ACTION! --> "Caterpillar Automaton"
ps. embarassin, there's music playin in it.

Walking Cyprus!

Last semester in a materials based class I tried wood carving for the first time and it was AWESOME! Took forever, and I got so many blisters but it was worth it! I bought some stumps at a lumber yard and though I was feeling kind of ambitious for this project I was only able to make one Cyprus seedling. And I didn't even slack off or anything, it just took so long to make one, I didn't have time to make any more!

So the story with this describes the transportation and growth of the Cyprus trees. I'll have to post pictures of my sketch for this sculpture, but basically I imagined these pods with little baby seedlings inside growing from adult Cyprus tress. When the pods would fall to the ground, the seedlings would stand up on their two little legs and run through the forest in search of a good spot to grow. Once they find their spot, their flip themselves over and plant themselves into the ground, where their bodies round out and branch out into a stubby little sapling and then eventually grow into a Cyprus tree.

The legs are jointed and can kick back and forth. The body and legs were carved and sanded and then finished with some finishing wax. The body was one stump while the shell was another stump. For the shell I cut the general half-circle shape out on a ban saw and then chiseled away at the insides to hollow it out. Once I got my desired form I used wood glue and a nail gun to reattach Cyprus bark to it's exterior. Shoved the little dude in the shell and done!

Rock Heads!

The Rock Heads
For a performance based project this past month I decided to reenact one of the myths from my Creation Myths about Earth's Geologies book. I chose to reenact the myth describing the creation of Monoliths. This involved the construction of rock heads!

For this, I used a beach ball as my base and layer it with newspaper, papier-mache, Bondo, Spackle, and house paint. Although the result was fairly successful (the larger head cracked near the base of the entrance hole) I'm kind of hoping to find an easier and less expensive way of creating a durable large full-face-covered mask.


My friends Mel and Max kindly modeled the masks for me! Dang, they are just the best! The performance involved more than just wearing the mask though. It was the entire reenactment of the burial process of the rock heads, and during the performance I took off some of my clothes and tried to bury myself in different areas around our classroom's courtyard. The performance was kind of nut-zo, but It helped a lot in realized the future of this piece. Point is, I don't have images of the performance because it was nut-zo.

So cute!

Creation Myths about Earth's Geologies; Continued

I finally bought a camera, so I've been able to photograph some sculptures I've done this past year! Alright! Back in January I posted images from my book, this book, about Earth's geologies. The sculptural component of that piece was the book and the pedestal that I created to present my myths.

The pedestal was created with cedar, as was the book, and I created the neck of the stand using a wood lathe to round out and taper a 4x4. The finishing coat on the pedestal was sanding sealer while the book was finished with finishing wax.

Today's Bento Box Lunch!

I usually pack a lunch for my Monday and Wednesday classes since I'm in school from 11:45 till 6:00. It's not an extravagant lunch, but I made it so here it is!

Peanut butter and Jelly
Trail Mix (Almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, and raisins)
Strawberries
Beautiful!