9 posts tagged “plaster”

The series of Centaur Chickens is now my H5N1 series, in honor of the Chinese gvmt's admission yesterday of the virus jumping from human to human.This is no surprise to the WHO, or to the viral community- who have mutated through thousands of generations since I first created this hen.
I created her last spring in my plaster figure spasm, and had some issues with her figure mold beginning to collapse (rubber molds will deteriorate over time) creating weird areas. I thought I'd move on to other things and repair her later- and later became now, a year later. I brought her out of the basement and looked at her anomalies,and determined a triage plan. I ripped down with files and built back in with plaster, and she lived through it all. I painted her a bit differently- and she came out with a stronger metallic sheen than the past few painted forms. I used two layers of thin washed color (vs 1 heavier layer) over the opaque base layer of stainless steel- the stainless steel paint is a craft paint that has real stainless steel suspended in acrylic. The result is a complex French Brown patina.
This hen is a mix of a Polish Chicken, a breed kept as lawn ornamentation that are nervous critters as their vision is impaired by the pom-pom. She also has a V-Comb, which has a nice devil-horn quality. The female form was sculpted from a 24 year old model who posed back in my MFA process (hence the mold being old enough to begin to slump).

As long as I was revisiting work from the summer, I couldn't forget the Centaur Chicken! This is CentauE, holding her egg on her shoulder- now in a nice Bronze color. Now I really need to create a better base for her- without snapping a leg off.

I created this figure last year, and thought it would be nice to check back in with her. I gave her a patina this week, and now am considering doing the same for my Centaur Chickens. The raw plaster flattens the form quite a bit more than I had realized- the form's dynamics are much easier to engage with now. I gave it a bronze like patina, in part to see what she would look like in bronze. 

No internet for few weeks here, but some new things were created- and now it is getting too hot to work in the garage. I played around with laying plaster over a male aluminum figure (from my MFA) and pulling areas, along with pulling a plaster from the silicon mold of the figure. Then I played around with introducing thin planar areas and really just made a mess. But after all the retentive work of pulling good figures, then centaur chickens...it was fun to get messy for a bit.

I may come back to this process, but since then have purchased foam and a hot-wire to cut the foam. I intend to begin working at finding gesture, balance, and form that is derived from the figure- but as a direct carving process rather than playing with molds.

This will be the last Centaur Chicken I create for a bit. I have a few more in mind, but I have some new ideas going in a different direction. The Centaur figures have answered many technical concerns, laying a solid groundwork for media use. I will still be playing with existing molds of figures, but allowing the figure to act as a stepping off point for exploration.
The centaur figures don't require the kind of creative attention and originality that generates a genuine motivation. By this I mean that they are a pre-existent idea that require a skilled process to create, but the process of creation does not significantly inform them or lead anywhere new: I know which figure and chicken will fuse well, which parts I'm putting where, and how it will turn out.  There is no risk of failure, no invention of necessity, no real interaction necessary- in other words, they are boring me. A good direction leads into the unknown and has inherent failures- risk and exploration inspire new ideas and new directions.

This piece is in a private collection. It is the first Centaur Chicken- Gallus Porter or Cock Man, as it's owner refers to it.I created this piece after a long period of plaster trial and error in the fall of 06. I finally reached a predicable/stable result with the straight figure.  Shifting this technique to the demands of the centaur chicken was a big test/risk of the plaster technique, as the torso creates an enormous cantilever of stress on the legs. I didn't think it would work, and so was happily surprised with its structural integrity.