Howdy, well a lot has happened since I posted a bit more regularly. I've a new gig at Harper College, teaching welding. The pay is a lot better. Unfortunately, I lost my pimped out studio when I quit my job as studio tech. (I also inadvertently lost my gig as Bronze Casting instructor, but that's another story).
I still managed to get some stuff cast. Partly through the gracious intervention of the new Bronze Casting instructor, Philip Spangler, whom I helped familiarize with the Harper CE bronze program, and who reciporcated by allowing me to throw my stuff into the Spring semester mix.
Partly through my own efforts casting coffee can investment molds at Chris Newman studios using my mini-melter Mark II.
Now, I have a new gig at
CIADC in Rogers Park, as Casting Department manager and instructor of metal casting. I'll provide more info on that as time allows. I'll be casting over there for the foreseeable future.
Anyway, the latest series is called Holiday Snaps. It is a series of creatures in relaxed vacation poses. Not sure what kind of creatures. Some clay ladies at the college exclaimed they were elves when I was working on them. Sure, why not? If you want a more intricate bullshit narrative, they are Icelandic hothouse elves, perhaps mutated by deep magma reservoir geothermal waters used to heat the greenhouses. Or perhaps they are natural denizens of the deep mantle come to call Iceland home.
In any case, I'm pretty sure rendering them was a case of cryptomnesia, as I came across a Rene Magritte painting that I'd seen before and no doubt unconsciously copied:
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| Les merveilles de la nature, 1953 |
These are 1/12th scale figures in bronze, cast in Dec. 2016/April 2017.
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| Holiday Snaps #1 |
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| Holiday Snaps #2 |
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| Holiday Snaps #4 |
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| Holiday Snaps #5 |
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| Holiday Snaps #6 |
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| Holiday Snaps #7 |
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| Holiday Snaps #8 |
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| Holiday Snaps #9 |
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| Holiday Snaps #10 |
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| Holiday Snaps #11 |
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| Holiday Snaps #12 |
What happened to #3 you might ask? They don't always make it. More coming, and hopefully with this series I've got all this cuteness and preciousness worked out of my system, but probably not.
Brilliant. I love them all. I adore #10, the way the angular/geometric shapes work with the humanoid legs, the relationship between the figures. I also love a lot #5: very fluid, with a tenderness in the way she's leaning into him; beautiful, beautiful work.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much! More than one person has said that #10 reminds them of cat and dog. (Woman is the cat). To that I say, sure! #7 has gotten a lot of faves on Instagram.
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