✨ Liv S. ✨ To Light ✨

TO LIGHT - WHICH CAME FIRST?

WORK/LABOR = EGGS

 -    PAPER LEAVES, METAL BRANCHES, KNITTED NESTS

WHAT COLORS? : Pallets

• reddish brown, maroon, gold, turquoise
• dark (grayish) purple, lavender, mint, med. purple, blue (primary)
• orange, sunset orange, meadow green, light yellow (butter), burgundy

 I want to make the lights eggs - preferably fairy lights (not regular bulbs, outlet bulbs, or LEDs). I might paint them robin's egg blue but for the color palate I have in mind a cream-color might work. Hopefully the light will shine through the acrylic paint, but I could always leave little holes throughout. I've been reading about the process of birds recognizing their eggs and how they leave ovarian marks - each bird has special ovarian lining they use to recognize their eggs. So, there's a multitude of ways that I can do this.

 

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Initially, I wanted my light project to incorporate hard work/joy. I still feel like this incorporates that - as a birds egg is very much their labor. Though, I don't appreciate the anti-womanist message of 'a woman's labor.' For this piece, the eggs are 'creation' and the finished product of non-birth labor. The nest will be made out of wool, red wool, and beads and fabricated leaves will hang from underneath. Once I have the fairy lights, it will be easy to wrap them around a branch/wool structure.

Another topic of interest (very in line with ovum shell tattooing) is parasitic birds that lay their eggs in other birds' nests and have evolved to mimic the egg shapes and patterns. They will sometimes push out the other eggs, or ruin the birds' nests if their eggs disappear. Their babies have also evolved to mimic the hunger patterns of the mimickee - and are also very loud and annoying. Of course, they can't evolve for every single species.

My Maquette:

It has little cord-and clay ornaments tied to the wire and paper cut-out leaves. The nest is glued together from inner-reed material ripped up. The eggs are the same oil-based clay, and the wire is curled into hanger-hoops on the ends. I will incorporate the same hoops to hang it from nails in my room.

I could incorporate 'almost' the right egg pattern along the fairy lights. How that would tie into work is: there's always someone who wants to sneak by life by being parasites and benefitting off of the hard work of others. The way most places are set us is the few benefit off of the hard work of the workers, i.e. white-collar and blue-collar citizens.

For the next, I'm thinking of weaving river reeds together, or the spongy inside of river-reeds. I want the whole mother bird experience, so I might also use sticks, twigs, moss, and anything natural or man-made that I feel will suit my nest. I'm still undecided for the bird eggs, but I'm thinking I should cover easter eggs in something like plaster or paper machete.🐇

My main ornaments are made from iron - the molding process was relatively simple and time-efficient. The other ornaments are made from sculpey and painted. I added leaves, parasites, and an acorn. I want the piece to look infested, though splayed out in necklace-like beads that fall down the sides of the branches. I might make some bracelets too to put over the branches for ornamentation. 

I'll have to drummel out holes in the iron pieces so they can hang with the other ornaments, or I might weld them to the branches? We'll see how it looks. 

The waxes I made don't have leaf-patterns on the back, only the front, due to the nature of the wax one-part mold I'd made. Perhaps I could etch a leaf pattern into the back, and instead of drilling holes into them as ornaments, I could use my other sculpey ornaments without the iron beads at the bottom. The iron big lea came out well - the vein structure is good though I burnt it a bit with the plasma cutter. Hopefully, a patina can cover up the burnt spots. The little leaf is not as defined, I'll have to drummel into it a bit. 

Since there can't only be two leaves on the steel branches, there's going to have to be iron leaves and something else. I might make them out of paper. Whatever they're made of (I'm going to be focusing on the main body of branches for now) they're going to be infected by a parasitic plant - as part of a whole 'light' parasitic ecosystem. In this instance 'light' could be seen as the truth, and I'm shedding light on these parasitic creatures - dangers to everything around them. 

Oh! I did buy felt to do the leaves, so I'm going to use that. I have a bunch of blue-green colors in different shades that will blende well together. I want to incorporate the leaf-bumps to indicate the presence of the parasitic plant - and in the same eye-shape as the other leaves.

 

For the branches, this is what I want to avoid:

It looks bland, uninspired, and, frankly, stupid. My ultimate goal for my branch base is to have it look nothing like this. :)

Instead, I'd like for it to have some limited texture. I want the main branches to be thicker and the rest to thin out as they go - which is why I will forge the tips before I weld them together. I want the branches to look dynamic in some way. 

I've decided I want to incorporate 'human parasitism' in regard to work - and 'fruit of one's labor.' The branch-like, knobby, and textured hand reaches out holding the next. The tendons of it pool down from the wrist, connecting into the muscle which bears the felt leaves and leaf buds. In order to achieve the detail I need, I will use aluminum foil and sculpey. The iron pieces will be attached to the next, and the beads will be looped around the wrist in a bracelet, or perhaps as rings around its fingers. The lights will have to intertwined around the nest - or the lights could be the eggs themselves. I drew the larger, parasitic egg cracking since the cuckoo bird usually hatches before the others and can grow far larger than the host mother. The eye peaks out menacingly, ready to kill its siblings.

I've shaped the hand and bulbous muscle roots different than the drawing - the tendons will come when I apply the sculpey. The bulbs are bigger - more room for the felt leaves and leaflets, and the fingers are angled to hold the nest. I'm going to have a spine coming up from the back of the hand so I can weld the leaves, berry, and nut to it. 

I'm going to paint it brown like a tree - with dark brown lowlights and beige highlights. I'm thinking about making the brown slightly tinted green to give it an eerie feeling. I want to paper-machete the eggs around light bulbs - or I could use glow in the dark paint. 

The spine will be attached by a number of spikes sticking into the foil, it will curve upward and be welded to the iron pieces. The nest will still be made from reeds, I have a few but I need to find more dead ones so that I can tear them up and begin my mother bird experience of building a nest from twigs and weaving them in. I'm going to be gluing on the felt leaves, and I will either make the eggs from clay, from light bulbs, or paint eggshells with removed insides (straw and nail method) with glow-in the dark paint.

I also want to patina the leaves green and the nut and berry brown. The spine must also be brown. It will have bracelets coming around through the spine spikes with the sculpey parasite beads.