Sleep Pod #2 and others

Today I had my second critique in my sculpture class. It didn't go very well because it was structurally unstable so it wasn't useable. I wanted people to be able to get inside (or at least me) but that wasn't the case. At any rate, the idea was that it was a nest/womb-like structure that you could hide out in whether that be reading, sleeping, knitting, etc. It was also nomadic though this was more of a problem than the good idea I thought it was. But I learned a lot and that's what school is for I suppose.




The diagram to this piece led me to consider what I would like to do for my thesis. This is the most basic idea of the thesis but essentially I want to try to bring my Sleep Pod sculptures together with my dream paintings and create an atmosphere based on both of those.






My thesis is still in its most infantile form but those are the basic elements that I intend to build my thesis out of.

Recently I've been photographing and identifying lots of mushrooms because it is more or less "mushroom season." Rain and decaying fall materials (i.e., leaves) are the perfect recipe for mushrooms. I found this one on my ride home the other day and then made my first spore print. In order to do this you just need to cut off the stipe (stem) and then place the cap gill side down on a piece of white or black paper (or both if you don't know what the spore print color is going to be. I'm getting ahead of myself. For those of you who don't know, a spore print is the spore deposit that a mushroom leaves when it is expiring. It is a mushroom's way of reproducing itself (like seeds).




The little white spots are collections of microscopic spores on the brown mushroom.



Since the mushroom was so brown I figured the spore print would be similarly colored. But to my surprise (and proving again that I am just a novice) the spore print was white and waxy. Neither of these characteristics did I anticipate.



I also found Field Mushrooms a couple days ago and identified them accordingly. I made a spore print of these and the colour was indeed a deep chocolate brown. After correctly identifying them I made soup with all of them I collected almost a whole pound from just one lawn. Luckily it was an abandoned lawn so I didn't have to ask permission. And its been over 24 hours since we all ate the soup and none of us suffered even a little so I think it is safe to say that I identified them correctly.



The larger mushroom was about four inches wide. The smaller was perhaps two inches wide, they were really big mushrooms! Field Mushrooms are the closest relative to the button mushroom you most regularly in grocery stores.




And now for Halloween photos!

Joel was a Monty Python Lumberjack
(for those of you not familiar with sketch, you can watch here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUkqqkbtSeY&feature=related)



I was a foxy teacher (Hot for Teacher?) from the fifties




Clara was "Sleepytime Genghis"



Kevin was an Idaho Potato Barron



Gina was a super bright super hero




Brady was a Zombarista



And Kelley was (maybe) Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas.



Here are all the mustachioed folk.



Kelley touching up on my busty husband.



The day after Halloween Joel and I test rode bikes so that he could take measurements of the bike bags that he wants me to make for him (industrial espionage). So I came along and while he measured I took photos of the mushrooms at Ladd's Addition.







And here are a handful of my paintings as of now. They're all finished (I think) save for the last one.






For those of you who didn't read the blog post that I made this summer, I'm making paintings of dreams that I've had. I started to narrow it down to just post-apocalyptic dreams, and dreams where the major theme is water. This is an outside-of-class project that I'm working on with one of my professors from last semester.

I'm hoping to put up more photos of my work and sketches. In addition to the aforementioned thesis idea I've been considering making "artifacts" from a post-apocalyptic pacifist hunter-gatherer community which would allow me to wed my desire to work with fibers (tents, clothing, etc.) and my obsession with hunter-gatherer methods.