I had breakfast with a friend this morning. I told her the word for the week was
"jagged" and she talked about the candle holder I gave her some years
ago which is now in her china cabinet.
I was scratching my head about this, trying to remember it while she wondered aloud about how I can consider
myself strictly 2D when I make so many 3D things.
"Yeah, but the candle holder is just four 2D sides that
I stuck together." She gave me one
of those endearing, exasperated looks and rattled off a bunch of other examples
of 3D stuff I've made. Okay, maybe
she's got a point, especially since I've been obsessively making Sculpey
flowers lately, and I did make the deer hide drum in the photo behind the candle holder. (Skinned, butchered, cooked, and ate that deer for that matter.)
I don't take any of my 3D stuff very seriously, and I guess
that's the point. I started doing
stained glass because I hired someone to teach stained glass classes when I was
Arts Administration Director for Wickliffe Civic Center (WICCI). Mom and I thought that might be fun, so we
signed up together. While breathing
lead fumes and burning my fingers on "real" projects, I ended up
making a lot of jagged shards of pretty glass.
Since I didn't want them to go to waste, voilà, candle holder.
But I don't think of myself as very good at these kinds of
things. It's just the stuff I do in
between "real" paintings, often things I do obsessively like Sculpey
flowers. More shards of stained glass
live next to the Sculpey in the closet. I wonder what else might be in there? Loops for making pot holders for sure, and a bead loom...
(...time out to rummage through closets... candle making,
leather crafts, embroidery, yarn, beads... a lot of rivets, fabric, buttons...)
Okay, okay, maybe I do make some 3D things? But I stick to my original premise that I
approach these things in a 2D way -- which must be untrue since now I'm looking
at some metal circles that might improve my Sculpey atom and some glass beads I
could string on fishing line...
On top of all that, now I also have a big pile of stuff on
my floor that seems to distress my puppy.
I suppose she knows a new pile of stuff means more obsessive craft
projects and less petting and cuddling, but I think my brother might get a new
leather wallet unless he's wants to stick with his latest duct tape creation. Maybe I should take a time out and get some
new duct tape in snazzy patterns?
Sometimes non-artists seem interested in how artists
think. I can't speak for all of us, but
I think a lot of us follow some variation of the above? My friend makes a comment, and now I have
piles of weekend projects with which to amuse myself. Maybe I said something that inspires a pile on her floor
too? Maybe just my laughing at her when
she talked about shelving her creative aspirations?
P.S. I found out that you can resuscitate crumbly Fimo clay with a little vegetable oil + found out it turns black if you forget it in the oven.
