Just a mouth and nose

It has been a while since I posted. Sorry for that. What I wanted to do here was make just a nose and a mouth. It is just shaped air dry clay. I will say that the inspiration for this piece came from parents saying to their children, "you have my nose but your father's lips." Please enjoy.

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Carb loaded

I have wanted to make a face with pasta since I started making sculptures.  Don't even try to analyze it, it's crazy.  I think the piece speaks for itself.  So I will only describe the process this time.  I used rigatoni for most of the structure.  To outline the mouth, eyes and build out the nose, I used Penne.  For the hair I used Fettuccine.  To hold it all together I used hot glue for the fact that it dries quickly allowing me to finish in under 45min.  I welcome comments.

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Stop and become the Flowers

Surrealism has got to be my favorite type of art.  Most of my pieces are surrealistic to some degree.  I can honestly say that when I made this I had no clue that I was going to be making a flower with a head at its center.  I think my art is impulsive and fluid.  I never plan, but I enjoy every moment I am creating it. I again used modeling clay, please excuse the colors as they were all I had available at the time.  The structure is a wire hanger that I bent to create the base and the flower stem.  I wrapped the hanger again with foil, which if you can buy some stock in Reynolds wrap do it, because I use a lot of it.  The small head is nothing only clay but I used part of a toothpick to hold the head up on the flower.  I welcome any thoughts.

The Dream Escapes

I sometimes think that our dreams have a mind of their own.  Although I know it is just our subconscious randomly pulling on memories and experience we have had and creating a scene for us to rationally comprehend.  I sometimes think that maybe our dreams want to continue even after we have woken up.  This is my interpretation of a dream trying to survive.  It is not made of air drying clay.  In fact it is very pliable, it is modeling clay.  I used pink, white and a touch of blue clay not for any particular reason.  I have some other pieces that I used several colors only because it is what I had left.  Since the clay will never dry it will not shrink.  I used aluminum foil as my skull for the main head, and I bent a wire hanger pierced the foil and wrapped foil around it to form and support the second smaller dream escaping.  I welcome any thoughts this piece may evoke.

Mushroom Man

This is my most recent piece.  I again used air dry clay, but this time the clay used is reconstituted from a failed piece, lets just say, after making several sculptures I still forget that it shrinks when it dries and a steel armature is not a good skeleton.  With that said this is free form, actually it is three separete forms that I merged to create the Mushroom Man.  I had no idea when i started working with the clay that day it would end with this sculpture.  So lets get into the process.  First I made the cap by rolling the clay between my hands, having been reconstituted it was really water logged and sticky.  Then I formed the stem (main head) by rolling the clay on the table with my hand making sort of a log of clay.  I then squished the clay to shrink down and make it stand upright.  I placed the cap on the stem and I thought wow this could be something, so I did what I do best, I made a face.  As I made the main face I would pull off clay as needed to create the contours.  Once I finished the stem, I felt the piece was complete and I placed it on my drying shelf.  I then started to clean up when I noticed the extra clay sitting on the table.  I picked it up, placed it on my right index finger and made another face.  I initially had no intentions of placing it on the back of the mushroom, but the way I made the stem to support the cap left a nice gap.  I place the second face on the back, and it fit perfectly.   Just as in nature when a fungus grows it spreads and the second face is deformed and looks as if it is growing out of the stem.  I have not sprayed the piece yet, so far I like the roughness to it, but as with most of my work I change my mind frequently, and I may yet spray it.  If I do I will show the end result.  As I am navigating my way through this blog I am playing with the quality of the photos.  I encourage you to comment on the quality.  I welcome criticism, on all things related to this blog.  I also hope to one day do collaborative works, and I welcome any artist to reach out. 

By A Nose

My wife Carla really likes the noses I make so I decided to make a large nose, but with a twist.  I have allergies and when I walk through a garden or smell most perfumes my nose starts to run, it is really unpleasant.  With that said The nose I made has a surprise behind it, that is what I think it feels like to have allergies.  So I decided to use my old friend, air drying clay.  This time only clay finished with an acrylic sealer.  Please feel free to let me know your thoughts.  I also welcome any ideas for future sculptures.

Fire Island Trip

Made while watching a movie on Fire Island

While on vacation with my wife and family in our favorite place Ocean Beach Fire Island, I brought with me some air drying clay.  I had never used air drying clay before but I did know from reading on the Internet that it shrinks.  So with that in mind I decided to use as a skeleton a ball of aluminum foil.  I did not squeeze the foil completely allowing the clay, as it dried to compress the foil and not crack the clay as it dried.  It worked perfectly.  When I returned home I sprayed the form with a Matte Acrylic Clear coat several times to seal the clay and give the piece a finished look.  This was a great success, and I have made several other forms using this process, some with foil some without.  I will post those for you to see as well.  I am very proud of this piece and I wanted to launch this blog with it because it is a good entry into my mind, and it is the moment I felt I could be on the cusp of what it means to be an artist.