Feats of Derring Do

Have some highlights of what I currently have been working on:

First the three samples of the pop cans sewn to hand dyed fabric and:

the final piece. I think they came out alright and I am certainly well practiced in the tedium of sewing and drilling pop can aluminium to fabric now.

After 18 hours of cut out work I finally riveted together this fan and decided to forgo putting the wrist chain on it.

After a few more hours it has acquired a castle shaped box to sit in as well. Now the explanation for this is simple, the cut out pattern on each blade reminded me of fireworks and how at the end of most Super Mario levels or games there are always fireworks, usually over Bowser's castle or even sometimes over Princess Peach's. Case in point the end boss fight of Super Mario World (4:45 in this video):

Therefore the title of this piece is Fireworks Over the Castle and will make it into my video game themed senior show.

As for actual jewelry class work the flower shield pendant is coming along slowly but steadily. after some soldering and refinement of the tabs this piece will be ready to patina a bright blue. But, right now the top half untintentionally looks like Majora's Mask:

of the N64 game of the same name, which I never really got into. There will always be time later for that sort of thing though. The mountain of games I have to play through is faintly ridiculous now.

Finally in wood, there's this little 12 inch by 4 inch by 4 inch abstract sculpture I've just put an oil with a walnut stain on. Loosely based on some curving pine needles I found and well, that's it really.

No time for videos unfortunatley but here's a nifty picture of all the copper dust and scraps from the fan at least....

Opening Stress

So. Hi. Due to the rather zany nature of this semester these posts will be in the dump and run vein content wise since I have my senior show coming up in early May. On with the progress shots!

 

Fibers, Junior Studio in which we are creating two fans, one functional, one not. above is the protoype of the fucntional one and below the two and a third blades I've cut out of sheet copper to make it. It takes me roughly three hours per blade, with out any filing or clean up on it, but I've recieved several compliments on how pretty the pieces are, so its motivation enough to put in the eighteen hours plus of work on it. Thus far I have been trying to keep pace by cutting out at least one a day, and I hope to be in good shape after this weekend.

 

The non functional fan is being cut out of pop cans into these interwoven shapes that will be sewn to a canvas carefully in the elaborate pattern on the bottom. I can't decide what back ground color to use with the final cans and a few other technicalities so I'm left doing the Fibers professor's perennial advice of "Just keep swimming."

On to Jewelry. Since most of my time is being taken up by cutting out the fan parts, most of my plans are still stuck in the idea phase. I have the sketch above for a pin or pendant that will have Lego flowers riveted to it, and a very purse like idea for the Super Scope reciever below which was part of a bad purchase of video game related goods at a garage sale event.

Despite all of my current stress, my mood has been improved considerably by this lovely music video on the relationship between Norway and America. Quite catchy, isn't it?