Cabinet Curiosties etc etc

As you can see in the post below this one I chose to sculpt a couple of "mythical" styled creatures by blending together various parts of rubber animals. This type of art is similar to the "cabinet curiosties" seen in the 16th/17th centuries where explorers and scientists would construct various animals or plant forms based on what little information they had, basically creating animals and presenting them as fact.

In more contemporary times artists have recreated this by creating their own fictitional creatures. One such artist is a German man by the name of Thomas Grunfeld. Grunfeld deals with a surreal form of taxidermy where he will piece together parts of different animals and sew them up flawlessly to create new species. His work is quite beautiful and seems to open up a new world of wonder. Some of his work from his "Misfits" exhibiton is posted below. Other artists have done similar things and the practice is becoming more common. For example there is Scott Bibus who is a member of Rouge Taxidermy and produces a more grotesque version of mixed species adding splashes of blood or various organs in odd places. Personally I prefer the slightly more attractive cleaner types of surreal taxidermy.

Compare that to the more gruesome form of taxidermy art by Scott Bibus (found at his etsy store) pictured below.

Sculpture Trash FTW!

Making things out of random trash is pretty fun. Especially if this means you get to play with hot melting glue and stuffs. Being that I haven't been well lately I was somewhat unsure about what this assessment required so I just made it up. All's I knew was that we were to produce some form of sculpture from a found object. And since I seem to have a massive fascination with $2 shop rubber animals and strange creatures I decided to make a couple of inter-bred species. Unfortunately I had a lack of tools and time so they are no where near as polished as I would've liked but ya get the idea.
Making these creatures was ridiculously easy. I simply (roughly) measured the necks of the 4 animals, cut them to the right shape, pieced them together with various forms of glue and then painted them. Painting them was the bit that took the longest. That and trying to get the paintbrush that I superglued to my hand off.

LOST WAX CASTING

Awhile back we played around with lost wax casting for Jewellery at art school. This meant we got to play with wax and fire. Two things I enjoy quite a lot.

The first step we had to take here was to find an object and construct it into a ring using various materials on hand. I chose the shape of a stingray found in a bag of rubber toys from the $2 shop. As the rubber was quite thick where I wanted the ring to be placed I opted to use the plastic ring of a water bottle as well as wax for added support. It was fairly difficult to keep the two secured together but after dripping hot wax and glue everywhere I managed to bind the two together long enough to get it on a sprue and flask base to pour melted bronze in. A plaster investment was then poured over this and baked in a kiln overnight. When this was ready we placed it in a casting machine spun it 3 times and melted chunks of bronze in the crucible. This involved a super hot flame. Which was pretty. The pin and arm were released from the casting machine which made it spin ridiculously fast causing me to feel somewhat nauseous (although that could've been the free beer from the opening across the hall). Once the machine slowed down and the heated bronze had evaporated the plastic/wax the flask was removed and the bronze was allowed to cool before breaking it free. After that we used various sanding and polishing tools to get rings looking as gorgeous as possible. The last photo is the end result... along with two silver rings which seem to appear gold here... but they are not. The silver rings took way less time to produce. They simply involved taking a stick of silver, heating it to make it pliable, running it through a roller to get the desired shape then shaping, soldering and polishing. Easy!

Octavia Cook

OCTAVIA COOK

Ocatvia Cook completed a Bachelor of 3D design in Jewellery in 1998 at Auckland's Unitec Institute of Technology. The majority of her work seems to revolve around brooches although she has produced other objects (including some very beautiful rings pictured below).

I have become utterly obsessed with her brooches. I am already a huge fan of brooches and badges. I have quite a collection and intend to obtain more. Preferably even make some to the standard that Octavia does. The lines in her images are wonderfully clear and smooth and the colours in her acrylics are absolutely stunning.

One of the main attractions to Octavia Cook for me is the fact that she uses a mix of silver and acrylic mostly. In saying that she has done many other things using just gold or other metals with semi-precious stones but it would seem she has quite a nice little relationship going on with acrylics. I’m also a huge fan of the cameo themes which feature in her Cook & Co: The Family Jewels (2005) as well as her Cook & Co Coffers (2007) exhibitions where she did a series of her past and present pets as cameo brooches. Absolutely beautifully produced as well as wonderfully sentimental. Love, love, love her!

Circus Freak Hottness

So.... Turns out that I've found the love of my life. Her name is Jessica Joslin. We were brought together by the oh so delicious blog my love for you is a stampede of horses. Her latest works titled Brass and Bone are fantastic. Very circus freakish, rather gothic with a tinge of steam punkyness to add to the mix. While we're on the subject of amazing people brought to me by my love for you, Christy Langer is pretty incredible. So so pretty!