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.