sokkeltje

I made another mold last week as I wasn't satisfied with the cast-result of the first pair. These ones are better, yet not perfect. Nevertheless today I have been busy making the back on which I mounted the feet.

Almost finished.

megan's little feet

So at last I've got a little time. Been bussy earning money to pay tax and drink and eat, when someone I recently made a bathroom for asked me wether I could make a cast of her baby's little feet. This looked pretty inviting as it produced a scala of problems I've been thinking a lot about the last couple of years.

After several days letting it sink in and occasionally thinking about it I had two options for making the mold in my opinion, ofcourse this was after I got rid of loads of other idears, such as molten wax, or using very soft clay. The two materials left were the dentist stuff, where they make a mold of someone's teeth, and a silicon based material with a very fast pot-life. But after making the first test with the dentist's goo, I immediately realised this was what I was looking for, it even smells like toothpaste ! It is called alginate, you mix it with water and it sets in a minute, after which it is very easy to remove, as it is rubbery, and it gives a mold in which you can define fingerprints. The cast is made of gypsum, extra fine, extra tough, and some acrylic added as well, the only imperfection is the air in the plaster. The mold has been destroyed in the casting, so I'll be doing another round mondays ;)

Have a nice day

Cheers Bo

Also hoekbloem update

I also have been bussy with another project (Yes there are some spare moments to fill, in between cooking, sleeping and working for money), the "Hoekbloem". There also have been some problems concerning the thickness of the epoxy coating, as I was sanding the woden frame came to surface on some points, which I chisseled out and filled again with red epoxy. I just did the last repare (I hope) on the red, I also did 2 rounds of repares on the black. The next step will be probably the yellow/orange heart on the top, then the green of the "stem" and at last the white/ivory of the "teeth". Next 2 pics are top and bottom view.

At last

Hello and welcome back. Once more I started the thing i call klooien, and there were and still are quite a few projects that need some geklooi. The good news is that I have some new stuff to show the curious ones among you, and ofcourse I will tell something about the things you are seeing, so here is the update on the clay-adventure. Miraculously enough after I opened the plastic bags I found that the clay was not cracked and all dried out, after being neglected for months on end.
I changed some minor things, bought silicon goo to make the mold with, and after that dried i made a second support-mold so that the silicon would not deform when I'd fill it with any compound. So the first pic is of the mold after I cleaned it a little:










The next day I just wanted to see wether the mold would loose from the cast without the use of release-spray (some kind of wax); the mold is made of silicon, so I hoped nothing, not even epoxy, would hold on it. Thank god it turned out all beautifully right, the only thing was that the epoxy I used was very thick, so lots of bubbles in the cast. The good thing is tho that the mold is still intact, so there is the possibillity of more than 1 cast. The next pic is the first cast, after some repares, drying after which i will sand it and do a second round of repares and sanding, etc etc. When I'm content I'll make a second mold of the cast and that will be almost perfect.

Something else

The thing is that the clay-adventure is taking too long. Everytime I look at it it is more and more awfull, the need to destroy it against the amount of time I already put in it is just not enough, but I can assure u that I can start dreaming smashing that big old hammer right into the forehead any time now. Enough about the clay now, i have a week with quite some time so HOPEfully I'll be able to do something with it that makes it worth the while after all. Also I've been bussy in a friends house, and more or less finished (for now). As a piece de resistance I build something, some shelves. Not fully finished yet, but I have to wait for the plaster to dry, before i can sand it, repair a little here and there, paint it and put on top of each shelf a thin layer of epoxy. So the next three pics are:

This is halfway, or actually a little later. The building of the thing took some time, as every shelf has it's own halogen fixture. Pics of before and halfway the build i might ad later, but don't have em at the mo. The second topmost shelves are plastered already.
















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On the next one u see it finished, as it is now. The plastering was ok, but had a little prob with the edges. Little pieces broke off, and also the inner hollows tend to get a lill edgy in the back of the shelf, as the bend gets tighter and altogether vanishes about halfway. Have to do some sanding especially there. When it IS finished WITH the epoxy and all that ofcourse there will be additional pics.














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This last pic I want to show because as u can probably not see it on the other pics, the little halogen lights. Not that they are really obvious in this pic, but u can see the little white spot, and, when u look closely, on the bottom shelf there is a slightly lighter spot. The gypsum is still wet, and even dry it is kinda grey, but they will give enough light once it's painted and the epoxy is in.When it's dark it looks kinda cool, comes to life. Wicked shadows cast on the wall and floor, it's all good. Thinking of a name .... mammoth, submarine, ribcloset, ribshelf .... another shelf.....what is this shit......getting tired of all these idears for "just another shelf again", One might ask wether my whole life evolving around the production of shelves. I am thinking that sometimes anyway, and I don't know wether that is a good thing, altho I'm kinda proud of most of the things I make, well, the ones I show lill ol u's anyway.





That'll be all. Need a shower pretty badly, clean clothes and soome food.
Ajo & have a nice day
Bo

just not

I've been working on this clay thing now longer then I anticipated. It just seems that every time i think it's looking good, and i start smoothing the surface, something else that doesn't look the way i want it to pops up. Then I cover it up, have a smoke and look at it for another time. Mostly I start cutting off pieces, hours of work, wrinkles & crevices, But then when I look too long at it it looses it's magic and is no longer a coherent face but a compilation build out of different parts of different faces. Not very human.
More demonesque. Which brings me to the next pointe: what do I want to express with this sculpture. And ofcourse that changes too while shaping the clay. Sometimes one would wish that life was not so full of possibillities, choises and experiences. Right. Here some more pics:
this pic is of about 3 days ago. Now the next few are of just a few minutes ago. If you want you can look for the differences !

new cam

Hello y'all

Today i was really fed up with the fact i didn't have a digital camera anymore, so I went through all my old stuff to find my trusty yet pretty out of date Mamiya 645 and swapped it for a cheap digital camera. It's pretty crappy, plastic et all, bnut hey, it takes pics.
And thus i can put these 2 pics for you to look at what kind of stuff i'm busy with in my spare time at the moment. It's a sculpture of clay. Once the form is finished i'll make a mold, and a few casts of ciment, gypsum and even epoxy/granulate maybe, the idear is to see it as a gargoyle type of thing, or maybe a fountain, a spout of water coming out of it's mouth, or lights behind the eyes and the above a door or something, as ornament, but that might take some time as i'm very busy with other work (for dearly needed cash) of which i will make a blog one of these days too. Take care & have a nice day.
Cheers Bo ;o)

update

Hello faithfull readers. I'm back for over 2 weeks now.
The trip was all that, and there are pics of it on the CA-trip blog (in links, right upper corner). What happened also is that my camera broke down during that trip. That also means that i can not take pictures of the things i'm working on right now, which are a little building and construction job (such as removing doors and putting smaller, older looking doors in their place, meaning also building walls etc.) and a head of clay. It's especially the clay head that might be an interesting work to follow, alas. Lets see if I can make the building job something to be proud of too. If only they will let me make something nice & fun .... Made a drawing/design today which would be that.
Gotta get me some euro's to pay all the bills (was not such a nice coming home) and a new camera. Until then, Be cool & stay tuned.

Already gone

Last weekend a good friend of mine turned 41 and celebrated this in Arnhem (the Nethertlands) making it possible for me to take some additional pics of some of my work in it's finished state. You probably have seen these 3 items before if you regularly keep track of this blog, nevertheless i'll post the pictures again. The table top is polished, on the picture I posted earlier it wasn't, the kitchen's supplement is working and put up, as well as the "wastafel-armatuur". Tomorrow I'll be on my way to visit my sister in Los Angeles, gotta pack some stuff and buy the last presents and all that stuff. You all be good and Have A Nice Day.

Cheers

Bo

easy day

Today I Started where i left off yesterday. That was the pieces you see above. However, I'm so not content with them that for now I decided to put them aside. Instead I opened Flash and drew the decorations above. That's about how they should be, more or less. When that was done I was thinking about how unproductive these last days were, and thus prepared the two supports "orchid" to the white-marble-sand terrazzo shelf. Now it's just some cleaning, gonna have a few days in which I won't have much time to work, and it's also quite dusty here. Right, I'll keep it at that. Have a nice day.


Bo

almost finished

*SIGH* Well, that's done i think. Need to put in the hanging mechanism, but no more today. Once more, from the top-side viewpoint

just another sunday

Today I started with drilling holes in the supports of grafplank. Also where the leg broke i drilled a hole. This might sound easy, but stone is quite tough and it takes a long while, in total about 1 to 1.5 hours. After that i made the reenforcements of pieces of steel. After I roughened these pieces up and brushed them of I mixed some epoxy and put the epoxy and steel enforcements in the holes. Let that dry for a day, next to the heater, and then tomorrow i can clean up the epoxy from the repaired leg, and shape that whole support as one. It's definetely taking shape. Need some more grinding and sanding tho ....

Also I ground the terrazzo shelves open. Quite a few holes and in the middle of the white shelf there's a piece of green marble ! Damn that shit. And I decided that the supports should be used on the white shelf. So, maybe cast another shelf ? or the probably 3 new shelves ? I'll keep you informed. The green one is nice too, but i definetely don't like the yellowish/brown one. Gotta find some use for it nevertheless, drop it somewhere with someone who likes it.

update grafplank

hat i feared would happen, happened.
One of the legs broke. Have to repair that, the other will probably break too. Anyway, a productive day, not in the least dust. Gotta clean a bit, there's a veil of grey on all the horizontals, scary thing is that it's all petrified little critters ground to dust.
Howerer, her's a pic of how it's coming along. Some things i'm not yet satisfied with, but with 1 more day of grinding and sanding ......

Dilemma

Yesterday i finished 1 support, which brings me to this dilemma .... The left 1 is probably less prone to break when i start grinding it into shape. Also it looks more like the stone "grows" out of the wall. The right one is how it was meant to be from the start. I almost want to make 2 different supports ..... If only i had more tombstones ;)

Grafplank 1

Also today I started on a new project, called "grafplank" or "tombshelf" in english. I have this tombstone which I recovered from a container 20 years ago in The Hague. Some Graves were cleared and the stones with all the stone was just discarded. Me and some fellow sculptors were low on money so it sometimes happened we got into these containers to salvage whatever useable piece of stone we could get. This stone i have been carrying around now just a bit too much, time has come to do something with it. So a new ..... u already might have guessed it.
Also bougth some blades for the decoupeer-saw, hoping that it would work on stone ..... It doesn't, so i'm back in the sawing by hand mode. On the upper part you can see a line, curved. Have to saw it, will take approximately 5 to 6 hours for each support .....

terrazzoshelves

Made the casts, got all the marble dust, sand and granulate, the white ciment, made 3 mixes;
1 verde granulate with white sand and whitedust
2 white sand and white dust only
3 crema granulate, crema sand and white dust
In short one will be quite green, one white and one yellowish brown.
Now keeping it wet for about 3 days, then let it dry for about another 4 days. Then sand it open so the granulate and sand will reveal it's true color. Hate the waiting, but alas, part of the process.

encore

This is as far as i go with these supports. The shelf I will make later, right now i think terazzo of wtihe and crema marble-sand, maybe some marble-powder too to make it more velvety, bound with white ciment. I feel not like working today, however, i know myself and there are these other designs for supports still waiting, crying out to be released. It's driving me crazy. So today i start work in wood again for a bit, make the cast for the terrazzo shelf too probably.

supports raw

Another day, eight hours of hard labour, the pieces each 9.5 x 9 cm. kinda need a drink .... I think I'll call this one "Orchid", and hope mich won't say that it is so Giger.