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Tag Archives: gears

Build

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by createdforjoy in Make

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Tags

art, balsa wood, blue, build, collage, copper, finish, gears, green, hope, make, metal, multimedia, past, patina, rust, treasure, vintage, wire

build01

I got the very best birthday present this year: a passel of rusty old metal, courtesy of some dear friends and their 140-year old farm. There are nails and screws, washers and springs, hinges and handles, locks and keys: all lovingly hand-picked, colored by history in shades of deep orange and warm red. Who wants a pristine, shiny package when you can have a gift pulled from the clutches of spiders in the back of the barn? To some, all that rust may just seem like tetanus waiting to happen, but to me it is the sweetest kind of treasure.

Maybe I appreciate it all the more because I’m feeling a little bit vintage myself these days. I’m certainly showing some wear (I like to call it “patina”), but I still work hard and have some pretty good stories to tell. If there is beauty in being authentic, then all my creases and chipped edges make me positively radiant. :)

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It was that theme — the value in building a life with layers of wear and age — that inspired my most recent collage. I used my favorite hinge from my collection of vintage bits (yes, I have a favorite hinge) because its dusky blue reminded me of the sky in an old oil painting. I also picked out a few gears and some rusted nails to bundle in twine, then set to work assembling a multimedia landscape.

The background is a 5″x7″ watercolor illustration board painted to look like a piece of worn metal. This was the perfect opportunity to use Sophisticated Finishes, a liquid copper finish that can be custom-antiqued with a selection of blue and green patina solutions. It is little more than chemistry in action, but it gives me a thrill every time I watch a metallic surface fade and oxidize before my eyes.

build02

The paper pieces are from a 1952 travel magazine highlighting the charms of the midwestern United States, a great fit considering most of the vintage pieces I used hail from Kansas. I snipped and sanded a little balsa wood house, wallpapered with a page from an old hymnal, and set it against a fence made of sculpture wire. The final addition was a grove of stamped, embossed trees.

build03

There is such an obsession in our culture today with looking younger than we really are, smoothing out our wrinkles and blemishes until our faces have all the interest of a buffed wax floor. I am not sure how having the forehead of a 16-year-old became so important, but I think a society that values appearance above character has just hammered the perfect, shiny nails into its own coffin.

I value wisdom and experience, and that stuff usually comes with the price of aging. I would rather show and feel those years and know I really learned from them, than stay the unwrinkled, unknowing me I was a decade ago. I suppose that line of thinking also makes me sound increasingly vintage, but I don’t mind, because I’ve figured out how much promise that holds.

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Clockwork Cthulhu

27 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by createdforjoy in Make, Read

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Tags

art, cthulhu, gears, glow in the dark, H.P. Lovecraft, Jules Verne, make, pocketwatch, polymer clay, read, steampunk, vintage

cthuluhumain

I made all the holiday gifts I gave to grown-ups this year, and these three polymer clay miniatures were without doubt the most fun to construct. I made one each for my husband and two close friends, all of whom like Steampunk and the work of H.P. Lovecraft. For those of you not on that particular bandwagon, be warned: you may feel yourself growing geekier as I explain. ;)

Lovecraft was a prolific horror fiction author from New England who lived in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Cthulhu is one of his monsters of the deep, a sort of winged cephalopod with a few human cousins somewhere on the family tree. Cthulhu is one of Lovecraft’s most beloved creations and has gone on to inspire a whole range of modern fiction and film. (I personally attribute his popularity to those charming tentacles.) Of course little did Lovecraft know, he wasn’t even scratching the surface — have you seen the stuff that actually lives in the deepest parts of the ocean? (Don’t get me started on that episode of Blue Planet with the anglerfish…)

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On to our second geeky definition: Steampunk is a science fiction sub-genre based on a sort of anachronistic alternate future, modeled after Victorian England’s technology. Just picture our society as a Victorian might have imagined it — steam-powered, clockwork-driven, and founded on the principle that everyone wears hats and gloves at all times. Jules Verne wearing goggles + metal gears + computers = Steampunk.

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I love working with vintage materials and I appreciate a vivid literary imagination, so these projects were a good fit. I decided to blend the two genres and create captured, clockwork Cthulhus, so I emptied out my jar of pocketwatch parts, grabbed a pack of glow-in-the-dark Fimo, and got to work. I really enjoyed crafting the tiny clay miniatures, brushing them with mica powder, and posing them in their new habitats.

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I am such a sucker for anything luminescent, and I spent as much time sitting in the dark watching these glow as I did actually sculpting. :) The smallest Chtulhu is about an inch high and spends his life inside a pocketwatch case. The other two measure about 2″ and 4″ across and make their homes in vintage mainspring advertising tins. I used tiny old screws, cogs, and rivets to add a little extra Steampunk flair.

cthuluhu3

While studio time is often both cathartic and challenging for me, the hours spent on these were just plain old, inventive fun. They were also a great exercise in using what I already had on hand to create what I had in mind. I vow not to stop here, and there are definitely more tiny clay creatures in my future. I’m thinking a tiny jar of miniature, glow-in-the-dark, mechanical fireflies…

cthuluhu2

If you’re interested in making your own Steampunk creations, you might check out Steampunkery: Polymer Clay and Mixed Media Projects by Christi Friesen. Her design sense is a bit different from mine but wholly inspiring nonetheless, and she has a fantastic sense of humor. It’s a great starting point, especially if you’re new to the world of polymer clay. Happy Steampunking!

cthuluhu5

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