The Purportedly Magic Jew

Holograms are officially the hardest things to take pictures of. ever. well...besides the back of your own neck...I had to bump up everything contrast, temp, tint, saturation, etc wise just so you could see some sort of image even though they're blurry because I was holding a lamp in my mouth, the camera tilted at an impossible angle in one hand and the hologram at any awkward angle I could get at with the other...now I have cuts all over my hands. anyway these are part of a series of jesus with kitchen supplies like strainers, drains, cupcake/cookie tins, etc as halos because jesus is magic and likes to hide everywhere...like toast...or stains. I have one more jesus and 2 others that have nothing to do with jesus that I could just not get good pictures of... the deformed glass jesus was dripped into an impression of the same toy mold I'm using in the holograms...happy easter from the "purportedly magic jew"!

In Memory Of

This is the 'finished' piece of the wax paper lace in progress post. I'm not too happy with it. I think the idea is fantastic but just technical problem after technical problem made me kind of give up and I just wanted to be done. After about a month working on this I just wasn't interested anymore and then that last final rush to finish just didn't work out; the clasp. Again I like the idea of the clasp [the design of which I stole from an antique book cover which connects the piece to the library stamp used for the lace pattern...in my head] but it just didn't turn out like I had expected and what I was doing [grinding the metal down so I would be able to bend it in order to fold the halves to create a back and front] ended up snapping the metal so in the end I had to epoxy the magnets to 4 seperate nickel pendent pieces which looks horrendous. I was working to 'de-value' the aristocratic ruff collars of the Elizabethan era by using wax paper and nickel while at the same time attempt to 'up grade' the wax paper material by historical association. I named the piece 'In Memory Of' because of the library stamp of Werner Lewald [who ended up being a WWII hero and president of half the bay area transportation companies before he died, which then ruined my piece for me because I felt like I was 'using him'...which I was] I used to make the lace pattern. I think there's a total of 15-17 layers of wax paper...I don't know...like I said...my idea is good I just can't ever follow through.

[also I see an obsession of giant neck pieces developing...great]

Eskimo Knitting

I found this really fantastic...jersey? tubing for sale at anthropologie for $9 a box [originally priced at $80 or something outrageous]. I think it had come with instructions from a crochet/craft/artist/company/I don't know but they were missing. I should have gotten the other box because it is the most peculiar fabric...ever. Anyway I got bored and started knitting this eskimo hood/cowl thing in stockinette stitch [check out those size 19 needles baby!] which I normally hate because it curls, but since it's so big and heavy and chunky I thought it might work.

Don't Drop the Soap [Prison Soap Knuckles]

I'm making soap brass knuckles for my casting class. It's really weird because in all of my other work I usually use found objects and yet when I get the chance to cast those found objects in another material I instead fabricate my own objects...I'm so confusing. Anyway I have many more fully solid ones but I think this was the best picture of the bunch. I have 3 sizes but they seem to be only xsmall, medium, and xlarge mostly because I wasn't really basing the medium or xlarge sizes off of anything so they got bigger than I thought they would. I blame this on my inability to comprehend spatial and portion size and also that my hands never grew up and are still child sized. no one in my class could fit this size [the xsmall is pictured] past their knuckles [even the girls]. anyway the colors I'm using are all pastels for some reason but I think it adds more humor to the prison soap idea. I'd like to find more essential oils other than fruity ones but who would think finding such things would be so difficult in california?! So far I'm using glycerin and shea butter but the glycerin is starting to sweat which is disgusting so I might stick to shea even if it's not as sturdy... I'm also planning on packaging these things to make them seem 'legit.' but I'm going to need a really sexy ad campaign with a bunch guys in a shower. either that or use my nonexistant photoshop skills to superimpose my soap knuckles into the american history x shower scene...

in progress.

Faux

I thought I had posted this but I guess I didn't. This was for my individualized class where we were supposed to recreate and/or improve a failed piece. The most horrible piece ever [first picture] was a piece I did for my sculpture class freshman year where we had to make an abstract human emotion or gesture appear to not be human, but still convey the emotion, and enlarge it to human size, out of wood. yeah. I was so confused...still am. so I made this horrible thing out of millions of wooden skewers that was at first supposed to represent an awkward hug from a taller person [installation not shown] but when we were required to move the pieces down to a show case, I placed it on a pedestal that when touched would rock back and forth which I liked better so then I renamed it 'beckoning'. The whole point of the piece for me was to make it seem as though it wasn't made out of wood. to make it appear either in motion or soft [which didn't work as planned]. that was my only goal.

so for the new piece I decided to follow that train of thought, but in reverse. I wanted to make something that looked like wood. so I decided to knit and embroider wood panels. of course this piece didn't work out as I had planned either [I was planning on making this crazy interactive game where you built something with the planks] but the wool I had chosen [for it's sheen that to me, resembled hardwood flooring] was too expensive for such a grand idea. so instead I made a tree trunk like collar/cowl/scarf thing which is so chubby and soft and warm. it was made out of 3 skeins of merino wool which created 14 different sized planks of 40, 60, 80, and 100 stitches that I then stitched together to create a double wall effect. I think I could have done better with the wood grain but you know how time doesn't exist and all so this idea is something I would like to continue. Both are failed projects to me so maybe the third time is the charm!