Hmmm…I am not sure about the scruffiness of the underside of this canvas, now I look at it here. It doesn’t look as bad in the flesh. My main regret here, is that I didn’t make a latex mould of this sleeping face before I stuck it into this box. I am as ever, on the look out for materials, and especially a dreaming face like this one, but there seem to be less and less dolls about. Perhaps they are hiding from me or have dreamed themselves into a world where I cannot get my scalpel on them.
In the history of me sticking things to other things, this has been the trickiest. It made me invest in silicone glue, since which I haven’t looked back. I am not saying this piece will help you study the weather, but anything’s worth a shot, no?
The house smells constantly of curing resin or drying latex, or must do. I have grown blind to it, if you can have blind smelling. You can have blind tastings, can’t you. Anyway, no matter. The reproduction of hands and feet isn’t moving fast enough, so I’m making more moulds. I have been setting moths and marbles and eyes inside the hands and feet, to make them look a bit like objects held in amber. I have discovered that resin doesn’t dry, it ‘cures’ and needs heat for this, so have introduced a hairdryer into the studio to help with the sticky resin problem. So fingers crossed for that.
I’ve invested in some 12×5 canvasses and am working on some landscape hand and foot pieces, which I will ask Martin to photograph as soon as he gets a mo. I am still deciding whether to add any kind of Arthur Mee caption to the piece below. It is a bit of an anomaly in this respect, but I think it would mess up the composition. Hmmm….more vintage marbles winging their way to me from ebayland. If marbles can wing. Yes, let’s make them wing.
Well, my resin castings haven’t gone off yet, they are still quite tacky. A sculptor friend of mine told me that the resin might have past its sell by date, which may be why it isn’t playing ball. Growl. So, I doubled the accelerator, which sped up the transmigration from liquid to solid, and gave off lots and lots of heat, but you can still leave your fingerprints on the limbs like translucent bruising. Sigh.
So, here is a plaster casting of a baby doll hand instead. Butterfly courtesy of ebay, words courtesy of the splendiferous Aurthur Mee. I poured plaster into the canvas so in real life, the hand appears to grow from it. That’s what I think anyway.
I have been experimenting with casting, but I haven’t used any of the pieces I’ve made yet. My resin limbs are refusing to dry properly despite adding the correct amount of accelerator and my plaster feet won’t come out of the moulds without snapping off a toe or two. This is what happens when you mess with magic you don’t quite understand – it’s all kind of hit and miss. Serendipitous, if you are being poetic and overly optimistic.
So here is something made from somethings that can be pinned down. Any mutability has been decided by the scalpel in my own hand, and whatever happens afterward when the brain puts everything together. Again, words courtesy of good old Aurthur Mee, baby from Save the Children
