Fantastic Beasts...

Long has it been my desire to mount the head of some fantastic beast to my wall.

Believe it or not, while I hardly ever work in 3D, I feel like sculpture is where my passion lies. Maybe it's just because I do it so infrequently. Sculpture takes time, space and usually a bit more money than I have. Plus you have to store it or give it away, or I suppose sell it, but I don't even know where to begin selling my work. I do actually sell my work on occasion. But it's rare.

Anyway, this project has long been in my mind, and all I needed was a really good excuse. I had one with my Work Of Art Project. The challenge was a team project of opposite words. Well... let me start again, a couple of weeks back the challenge was temporary art, and I made a piñata, a bird piñata.

It gave me a taste for working with paper-mâché again. In the past and on the whole, I've not been very good with paper-mâché. I find it difficult and time consuming. It's chief merits being that it's inexpensive and light weight.

I was seduced my the medium when I found success with the bird and was eager to try my hand at it again.

My friend Jeff Grader was always good with paper-mache. I though of him often while working on this. I'm sure he's made similar pieces at some point or another.

When I was thinking of opposite words, I immediately thought that Beth and I should find words that would give me an excuse to make my paper head. What can say I'm selfish.

I had plenty of inspiration for the fantastic beast's head. Dr. Seuss made an amazing serious of heads. My cousin Matt is a hunter and has many heads mounted on his walls. I've always been a tad jealous, but never wanted actual taxidermy heads myself. They strike me as terribly expensive. And of course there are all of the animals out there.

We came up with the idea for our opposite words, carnivore and vegetarian. Very exciting. Beth hasn't been able to make her heads yet and that's my fault, I was slow in sending her supplies. I thought id we used some of the same supplies our pieces would tie in together.

I came up with this for vegiterian. It's a mix between a cow and a gazelle and maybe a hippo. It has a sort of hippo mouth and chin.

It's all paper except for the wooden base. It is not in fact duct tape on the horns. It's silver paper.

And it was a labor of love.

I found that gorgeous orange paper on sale at the fancy paper store and couldn't resist it. But the spots you see on it are actually eyelets with holes. Which I could have easily filled by putting two layers on the head. But no... I liked the dark spot in the middle, so I spent hours pasting tiny pieces of paper into each hole. Why not just past a layer underneath? Because the orange paper was too transparent. Which leads me to the other problem. Where did I get the little spots of paper? Glad you asked... see the stripes on his forehead? I cut up the darker stripes for the spots. How fascinating you say! I know. It's riveting.

I only mention it because as I sat there working the damned head, labor of love, it hit me. Ah yes, this is what it is to be an artist. It's all about torturing yourself and caring too much about whatever it is you are making. It's a strange compulsion that keeps you going. It forces patience, along with impatience, rage, frustration, futility, hope, confidence. In the end you find out if it was worth it or not.

In this case I just sit around beaming at it. Shocked and pleased at how well it turned out. A long time goal finally accomplished. I'll kiss him on the nose for the hundredth time tonight and beam at him some more tomorrow.

I have trouble saying this sometimes. I'm proud of this piece. I really am.

I owe them an apology....

And it's long overdue...
This goes out to Beach House:

I'm sorry, and I was wrong. I was very wrong.

Long have I tauted Beach House as the worst band ever. You have to understand, this goes way back... about three years. My sister and I were going to see in concert The Clientèle in concert.

For those of you who know me well this might be met with a thunderous "What Kate see live music? Go to a concert? Has she taken leave of her senses?"

Because it's true, I hate live music like poison, the crowds, the loudness of concerts, the lack of anything to do during the concert... Don't get me wrong I like music, and live music can very cool, provided I don't have to attend the concert. It's just I never just listen to music without doing anything else. I read, or draw or clean or work, or walk or dance while I listen to music. I hate concerts because to me it's unnatural to just sit and listen to music.
But every once and a while I can be talked into going to a concert.

Thus the case with The Clientele, a band that I know one of their songs... Reflections After Jane.This is again a cause for alarm because if I love a band and know a whole bunch of their songs I will go their concert, because I can sing along. It's something to do.

Beach House was opening for the Clientele at the MFA, and from what I had read, they were an exciting band on the rise. I liked the name, but Beach House not so much. The singer explained early in that key on her keyboard was broken and it was throwing off the sound a bit. Which gave them a little sympathy because they sounded terrible. Nobody was applauding after the songs, and they sat on the stuffy little stage for what seemed like eternity. I think it was for about an hour. At one point they started a really pretty song, but soon the keyboard struck sour again. Beth and I decided that this poor band needed some encouragement. Not because we liked them, no this was out of pity, because we could imagine being trapped on stage with a broken keyboard, knowing that we had to finish the set, as people talked through or simply walked out on us. A few people joined us but our pity applause was even worse than no applause at all. After they finished, they told us their new CD was on sale in the lobby. It was met with shocked silence. And I thought broken keyboard or not this is worst band I've ever seen.

But I was wrong, so very wrong.

Years later, I read another glowing review that dreamy band Beach House. I thought, oh you've got to be kidding, that was the worst band I've ever seen. But I've only ever read glowing reviews of Beach House and I thought to myself, I have to check into this again. I picked the album that they had just released when we saw them.
I listened to it and... it really is dreamy and lovely. I'm slightly obsessed with the song "Wedding Bell"

I owe Beach House an apology because I for years I've been wrong about them. I've been telling the story of the worst concert ever. A broken keyboard had tricked me, I see Beach House in a wonderous new light.

And it's great.