Art in Ed

Shit Happens

I've just this minute finished painting a piece and I am still scraping glue off my fingers. It is called Shit Happens and you will notice that it continues with my black, white and red theme.... (except for the dog poo which is realistic poo brown... (which is a colour that is very easy to mix as my 4 year old neice can attest to... she loves seeing what happens when all the colours on her pallette mix together...))

Ok, not a very spiritual piece but it makes me laugh and I have to say I was really pleased when I saw how the whole thing came togther. She looks a little weird without the dog so when making her I held a virtual dog image in my head.

The image came to me after watching Reece Weatherspoon in Legally Blonde mincing along with those tight little skirts and her chihuahua. I was probably very annoyed with John Howard at the time because I fully intended to do a black and white stencil style drawing of him on the dog, intermingled with the spots. But there is no John Howard... couldn't do that to such a cute dog! But hold that thought!

If you want to see what she looked like before firing here is a pic. I am using Kean's Raku white clay which is very strong for building up, yet still much more manageable than terracota in terms of creating details. A lady just has to have eyelashes! I Bisque fire at 1000C and then paint with acrylics and use a matt varnish for the skin and a shiny one for the dress. I have been having some problems with some of the colours fading a bit more than others ( eg warm blue) after my pieces have sat in shop windows so now I am using up to 3 coats of varnish.

You will notice the expression on her face. It is that euw one that you might get after holding one doggie bag full of poo while watching your dog make another lot.

As I make my pieces I find my body and facial expressions mimick the piece. So for three hours while building the head I had that expression on my face... no doubt creating euw lines, rather than nice laughter ones. I kept thinking about what my mum always said when I was a kid.... watch out it will stick!

Then after all that hard work, when I came back the following session, I thought the head was too big and too ugly - a girl has to look pretty even when saying euw - so I took it off, collapsed it (pummelled it into a ball) and started again, so my poor face had to survive another few hours of different ways of euwing. From beginning to end it has taken me about 2 to 3 months. It will probably retail around $1100 + Australian.... but I am not wanting to put it out there until my next exhibition so I get to enjoy it for a while.

From my visual diary:

posted by Sue Stack @ 6:08 PM