Nature and Nurture Update: Pictures and Prizes

This is the piece I put in the Nature and Nurture show.  It is entitled 2,358 Nails.  My mother passed away the day after I was born.  There is a nail for each minute we were alive together.  Each nail was pounded by hand.

 

This sculpture also won a 3rd place prize from jurors Madison Smith and Brian Kershisnik.

Nature and Nurture show update

There will be a reception for the Nature and Nurture show on Thursday, October 14, 2010 from 7:30 to 9:30 pm at the HFAC. Come, meet the artists (all of whom are cooler than me), and get some refreshments! See you there!

Nature and Nurture: Narratives of the Family

Awesome news: One of my works was selected to be in the Nature and Nurture: Narratives of the Family show at Brigham Young University.  The show is a collaboration between alumni and current students of BYU, and it is really cool.  I just found out today that I got in, so I will put up some pictures as soon as I can.  The piece I put in is called 2358 Nails.  You should come and see it!  (No, seriously.)  It is in the Harris Fine Arts Center here at BYU from October 12-28.  The whole show takes up the main floor gallery, as well as the 4th floor hallways.  My piece will be on the 4th floor, so come find it!  I will post more information as soon as I know when a reception will be and as soon as I get pictures of it installed.  Bring your mom, dad, or other family and see it!

New Slinky Sculptures

I've been working on a new Slinky sculpture in the last little bit.  I've had the idea for this piece for over a year, but I'm just now getting the engineering down.  I wanted to recreate the motion of a Slinky as you "juggle" it back and forth in your hands.  After a few failed designs, the one below won out. It's not finished yet, but it is in moderately working condition, so here's a picture:

(P.S. This picture is a composite of 4 separate pictures.)

I also made a static (mostly) Slinky sculpture with some steel I found out in the scrap bin.  This one is inspired by one of my friends who, while playing with one of my Slinky toys, draped it over his finger.  I thought "Hey, that's a cool way to look at a Slinky."  So I made it.

There are lots more things on the way.  Stay tuned.

Catalog for Museum of Glass

So the catalog for the Museum of Glass Red Hot Auction is now up. The show happens the 11th of September and Reflections of a Parallel Universe is going on the (silent) auction block. The link is here if you want to check it out: http://www.museumofglass.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/catalog_art.pdf

PS, he's on page 26--item #40.

The Show Must Go On

And so it did! Thank you so much to everyone who helped make Apparatus of Play a success. It was a great learning experience to put up my first solo show, but hey, that's what college is for, right? So, I will take you through a mini-tour of the show via pictures and I will upload video in the near future.

This was the first piece you saw when you walked in the door. It's title is And Time Creeps On and On Like a Slinky Attached to a Windshield Wiper. The Slinky is roughly 4 1/2 feet long and is powered, as the title suggests, by a windshield wiper motor.

This little guy is called The Battle of Four Corners. Its a steel frame with plastic army men inside. About 9 inches square, hangs on the wall.

This is Contemplation Chair (On the Other Hand). It is a found chair with a Slinky on it. You're supposed to sit in the chair, hold the Slinky, and contemplate life.

This sculpture is entitled Heaven. I found the gear in a dumpster a few months ago, put glass panes on either side and filled it with 144 marbles. It also hangs on the wall.

This is Heaven's companion piece. It is called Labyrinth and is made from stone, bronze, and dross. The dross represents the damned who are esteemed as dross and cast out to wander forever under the watchful gaze of Cerberusaurus, the three-headed dinosaur.

This was a favorite at the show. Nappy Noah is a 32 x 42 inch replica of the old Wooly Willy toys. I changed it to be me so it would be a self-portrait of sorts. It really has iron filings and a magnet wand so you can change the facial hair. Man, I look good with a beard.

Parachute Soldier. This is a bronze cast from a paratrooper toy. He hangs helplessly on the board, as his parachute has been caught on the nails in back.

This is a funny one. It is called Permanent Record (GPA 1-12) and it is a Slinky graph of my academic performance from first through twelfth grade.

This is Slinky Self Portrait. This was on display by itself in January, but fit wonderfully into the show. It is 5'11" high and wide (my height and arm span) and has Slinky toys strung across it. The Slinky toys are picked music box style by a steel bar at the bottom. Really fun to watch.

And last, but not least, When Enough is Never Enough. There are four little bronze paratroopers dangling from a real live parachute. They are kept aloft and twirl around because of the breeze from the fan underneath, and occasionally they will ping together.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the virtual picture tour of my show. I will have video up in a week or so, depending on how quickly I edit and compress everything. Have fun until then!

Museum of Glass Red Hot Juried Art Auction

The other day, my good friend and potter extraordinaire Katie Jahner tipped me to a show at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA--the Museum of Glass Red Hot Juried Art Auction. It looked really interesting (and it was free to enter) so I put together an application and sent it off. I entered the piece you see above, Reflections of a Parallel Universe. This was a really fun piece to make, and I'm glad that it will soon be at a show where many people can see it and be able to buy it.
I started out with this piece by sculpting a head out of clay. I then made a mold of the head and cast it in wax. I used the wax, in turn, to make a special plaster mold that would stand up to the intense heat of glassblowing. I then took a hot gob of glass and blew it into the mold, thereby recreating the head I had sculpted in a hollow bubble of glass (Shortly after I blew this head in the mold, the mold broke, so it is the only one of its kind!)
My roommate at the time had recently taken a class where they mirrored the inside of a flask with silver nitrate. I contacted his professor and his TA's were kind enough to show me the reaction and let me perform it on this glass head. I now had a clear glass head mirrored on the inside with silver. I mounted the head inside a hexagonal box that I made and it was done!

Well, I'm excited to box this bad boy up and send him off to Washington, but sad to see him go at the same time. I'll let you know how the show goes in September.