A tour of my old bedroom

Before we start the "art tour," isn't this a pretyt view? It is the view from the family room at Mom's house. That's the Wye River out there. It is just so peaceful.

Mike has gone back to Austin and I am staying at Mom’s for the week. We had plans to do some things but now a snowstorm has come today and we moved our appointments to the end of the week. Today I was wandering around my old bedroom and the shrine to my old art projects. I thought you might enjoy looking at them.
I always liked doing art projects and when I found out that I could satisfy the home-ec requirement by taking art, that sealed the deal for me. This is the Humpty Dumpty that I made from plaster and painted with acrylics in 8th grade I think. The interesting thing about Humpty is that he was assulted by another student who the art teacher caught in the art storage room sawing Mr Dumpty's arms off! I was called into the office to hear the bad news. Fortunately I was able to repair him. The other student was suspended from school for a few days. What a sicko.
I went through a gnome phase for a couple of years. The ones on the right (male and female) were made from clay in art class (maybe 9th or 10th grade?). The one on the left, without the hat, is made of wax. We were studying the lost wax method of sculpture. I made him in college and the teacher had intended for us to go to a foundry to have our wax creations cast in bronze. I think the idea was to create the shape in wax, somehow bury the wax in sand and then pour the hot bronze in. The wax would melt and disappear and the bronze would fill the space. The hot metal would cool and voila - after dusting off the sand I would have my bronze gnome. I worked really hard on warming and shaping the dark green wax into the gnome most of a semester. We had other projects too and I always enjoyed going into the studio and getting lost in my projects for hours, even on weekends. The trip fell through and now I just have this wax model. I think I got an A in the class though. Someone dusted his hat once and it broke, but my Mom just can't throw him away.

Here is the Hickory Dickory Dock clock made of clay. There is a mouse peeking down at the clock from the cone-shaped roof. And mice and other creatures are dancing around the face of the clock as it strikes 1.

Orville, my step-dad, used to go out in the river in his rowboat and "run the crab pots." I made this piece out of clay showing him smoking a pipe and scolding a crab that had escaped from the basket.

I really enjoyed "thowing" pots on the potters wheel in art class. Here is one of the bowls I made. I loved using multiple layers of glaze. Maybe someday I will take a pottery class and get to do this again.

Here is a project where we started with a large rectangular block of plaster and the idea was to carve out to create a 3d image. It was a harder project than I expected. Once an area was carved out you couldn't get it back again so it really required a lot of planning and thought. If you can't tell, it is a ski racer going around the gates. Much to my daughter's surprise, I also did needlepoint, crochet and embroidery in highschool. Here is one of the pillows I made.

Looking at these brought back many memories of other art projects that didn't survive. All those 2 point perspective drawings, a crab made of paper mache and covered with tissue paper (my friend Kate made a life size scuba diver!), the pyramid made of sugar cubes, books of charcoal sketches and linoleum blocks for printing. I hope you enjoyed the tour!