This was a doozie!

Detail #1

Detail #2

Detail #3

Slipping Through My Fingers. (2009). Mixed Media.

I think of all the projects I have done in my lifetime, this was one of the hardest. Not necessarily because of the content or the actual production, but I met with a few twists and turns that truly qualified this one as a doozie. 

My original idea, well Ricky's original idea, called for the easel to be situated inside of a wooden art bin. Inside the bin were crumpled tubes of paint and other miscellaneous art type things. The painting was going to be 9" x 12" or 11" x 14" horizontally and the hand was going to punch through to the side of the body. The paint can was going to be situated at the top of the easel and attached so it would not move. As you can see... very little of that came out in the end and to be honest, I am glad that things turned out the way they did. 

The first dilemma came when I realized how hard it was going to be to attach a solid wooden hand to a flimsy section of the art easel. There was no way on this planet that the flimsy wood was going to be able to hold the weight of the hand. So Ricky decided to attach the hand to the solid piece of wood that worked as the main component of the easel. They were approximately the same density and held each other's weight evenly. Once we successfully attached the hand I discovered a slight problem. The canvas now had to be bigger and it had to be horizontal. 

So back to the drawing board I went. I had to make sure that I could still get the point across based on the new positioning of the hand. Fortunately, and luckily, the hand actually fit perfectly and protrudes directly our of my head. I couldn't have planned that better even if I wanted to.  Yay for happy accidents. 

Then the true nightmare began... the paint dripping. I tried so many different things to get that paint to stand up straight onto the hand... aluminum foil, a wooden dowel, you name it I probably tried it. Finally I decided that I had to bake the hand. Fortunately that wasn't going to be a problem since it was wooden and typically you bake maquettes on a wooden base anyway. So I just started sculpting out the different pieces directly onto the hand. I had a wooden dowel in the part that needed to stand straight up and when i went to put it in the oven I had everything stable. Unfortunately, as the cooking process continued the dowel fell over and was hardening in the wrong position. So I had to remove it and cook the pieces separately with the hope that I could super glue them later. Then it got worse. When I went to take them out of the oven the hand fell off the tray and some of the pieces broke off. More super glue work.. ugh!

Eventually I did manage to get everything painted and went out and purchased some super glue. The only problem was that the super glue was not holding the wooden dowel in place. The only thought I had was to put more sculpey there to hold the dowel in place. Unfortunately, now that I had painted the sculpey, I couldn't put it back into the oven. So I was stuck. Ricky and my aunt then gave me the suggestion of trying a hair dryer. Logically it made sense because those things get extremely hot. So I borrowed Kristine's hair dryer and between my aunt and I, we sat there holding the hair dryer next to the fresh sculpey for over an hour. But you know.. it worked! Who knew! 

After all of the disasters, the last thing I was worried about was the trip to school. The project had maintained its structure overnight and I was happy with the final result. I just needed to get it to class. You never know how many bumps are truly in the road until you have to transport a project like this. Every little bump I would turn and check to make sure y project was still in one piece. Fortunately I made it to class and everything maintained its shape. I got pretty good reviews from most of the class and my professor seemed to enjoy it. So I will find out in 2 weeks how I did. I am not too worried about my grade, I am just happy it survived.