Building Boxes

I have some updates but I'll be up front with you, dear reader, and let you know they are not terribly exciting updates.

Let's back it up.

My original plan to have the statues fit like puzzle pieces into their support structure (those yellow cement tubes) was flawed from the start.

There were so many things I hadn't considered.
So many things I hadn't even thought to consider.
This is where being a rookie starts to show.

In any case, the yellow tubes were failing. The sculptures were dangerously top heavy. Neither the head nor the tail would stand up on it's own. I had to come up with something that allowed each piece to support it's own weight. I decided to make a box that I would fill part of the way with cement that I would then fit the tail sculpture into.

I had spent Wednesday this week making an ugly, off center, and ill-fitting wood palate to try and stabilize the head. It works, but just barely. And it's ugly. And it's probably unsafe. I will be spending today making a new base for the head sculpture and undoing some of the missteps I have made.

Turning lemons into lemonade.

More about the tail base: I started by making a wooden box out of wood we had laying around. I mixed and poured two bags of concrete into the box (onto a trash bag that I used to cover the bottom). The cement is the consistency of gritty oatmeal with gravel in it.

With the help of the Massively Muscled Matthew and Justly Juiced JC they helped lift the (probably 310lb?) tail, remove the yellow base by tugging on it and grunting and together they plopped the sculpture into the pile of cement that I had already poured into the box.

Wonder of all wonders the damn thing stood up on it's own.
Just like this:

I could hardly believe it.

I spend some time fussing and adjusting things. Pressing the wet cement up underneath it, forming things a certain way, patting stuff down, but mostly, the damn thing just stood there.
All on it's own
It was such a HUGE relief.

It's worth mentioning that the tail was so off-center before that it was leaning against a saw horse.
Seeing it here, standing up unsupported now, fills me with hope. I placed the box the tail is in on top of a make-shift palate that one of our floor jacks can fit under so when it comes time to lift this now almost 500 lb sculpture into a truck we can at least get the thing off the ground. I will mimic that design today when I spend some time fixing this still-unsatisfying situation with the head.

I am going to use this opportunity to elongate the Dragon's neck as well.
If I were to install the sculpture today it would stand out of the ground only about knee-height on a human adult. It needs to be taller than that.

There were so many things I did not know when I began this.
But look at me now.
Older and wiser.

As an added bonus I will turn the concrete base we removed form the tail into a dragon hand.
It should be strong enough to be a little mini chair (or certainly a side table).

Waste not want not.

Rawr!

Now I'm off to make a dragon come to life.

Dragon Sculpting: CHECK

The sculpting part of the 3-part dragon statue is finished.

Onward to the sanding and painting parts!

Here are all three pieces complete (the darker parts indicate the wet concrete).



And some still photos for the detail bits:

Here we have the back of the head 

All 3 pieces together

Today I will sand the rough edges off and build new bases for the Head and Tail pieces that will hopefully balance their significant weight.

Having never sculpted before I did not know what would be required from me in this Try-Not-To-Have-Your-Statues-Fall-Down-Because-You-Made-Them-Too-Top-Heavy arena. It's daunting to think about!

Close up 

Everyday I find myself having a mental conversation that goes something like "Stop worrying, Tana. You do not need to know how you will move these things today. That is not your job. Your job is to make the best dragon sculpture you can make. Worry about moving her later."

 From above

At Matt's suggestion I am going to sink some concrete hooks into the new cement bases we are going to pour. This will give the crane (or whatever we end up using) something to hold on to while we heft the 300+lb sculptures (and their heavy bases) off the ground and onto a truck or a flat-bed or a willyoustopworryingabouthowtomovethemalready?!

So.

Back to work sanding.

~t

Dragon Gets a Face

Time for a little Dragon sculpture update.

We went from this:



To this:



In one day!
Not bad for a days effort.

Today is Friday and I should be able to finish all the sculpting work (knock on wood?) that I have left to do. Then comes the hard part. The part I know nothing about. The FINISHING.

A video about where we are now

I just have so many unanswered questions. Should I seal the concrete before I paint it? Is an automotive primer the right kind of primer to use? Can I use automotive paints on cement, or will it not seal properly? Will the concrete expand and contract in the hot and cold climate of New England in such a way that it will crack my hollow sculpture?

And finally, how the hell am I going to transport this thing?
Each part weighs over 250lbs

But those are not my priorities today.
Today we just make art.  
Today we work on Eleanor.

Let me tell you a story about this dragon's name.

The other morning Sekiah is chatting at me during breakfast and I ask her what color the dragon should be. "Well, Auntie," she says, "is it a boy dragon or a girl dragon?" Not wanting to appear gender-bias I said "I'm not sure dragons are boys or girls. I have just been calling it Hope Dragon because it gives me hope.What do you think of that?" 

She thinks about this for a minute. 

"I think," she says finally, "That she should have a girl name."

"Oh!" I say. "That's a terrific idea. What should we name her?"

"Lily," says Sekiah. "Or Eleanor."   

So Eleanor it is.
Eleanor Hope Dragon.

The "Hope" part came about when Kirsten texted me one morning this week (or last? Time is running together again) and said "Hope Dragon is coming out great today." (or something very much like that.) And the capitalization of Hope reminded me of this thing Kate DiCamillo wrote on her facebook wall about spying for hope.

"In the mail this week: a letter I cannot stop thinking about.
Written by an adult, unsigned, no return address.
This person is having a lousy, lousy time; and she (or he) wanted me to know that my stories have helped.
“Thank you for letting Despereaux be a hero and allowing Otis to keep a job and giving the magician a loving wife.”
Something about this just undoes me.
I showed the letter to a friend who said, “Man, that person really needed some hope.”
And I thought: that’s it. Hope.
Katherine Paterson once said that writing books for children is being a “spy for hope.”
I am so grateful to be doing this, to be spying for hope."

And that's what I want to do, too.
I want to be a spy for hope. 

And I want this Hope Dragon to watch over my family while I am away from them in Florida.

I'd like my mom to look up out of the kitchen window while she's standing at the sink and see the dragon's head poking out over the hill. I want to be there without actually being there. I want the kids to climb and play and jump off the dragon's back. I want their imaginations to run wild.

Plus, it'll just be cool to have a dragon in the back yard.

Back to the process of creation:

I knew she was going to need horns.
Wednesday morning I took Matt's metal cutting scissors and cut two wire mesh strips that I then bent into horn-like positions.




Then I filled and shaped them into horns, set them aside and let them dry for a day.
Yesterday morning the first thing I did was take those semi-dry horns and affix them to the top of the statue. I left several strips of wire mesh coming out of the bottom of each horn so I could cover those with cement and hopefully lock each horn securely in place onto the dragon's head. Will this work? I have no idea. The strength and durability of concrete is not my forte.  






If they break off we will do something different next time.

I laid in some eyebrow edges and filled in the horn base with more cement.

Honestly, I was a little nervous about making the eyes.

As in comics, the facial expression is the most important part of the piece.
It won't matter how good the scales look if the eyes are jacked up and ridiculous.
But, rather than worry I just jumped right in.

Wadded up a lump of cement, patted it into place, and cut the pupil in.
Then I built up the eyelid around the naked eyeball and voila.
Repeat the pattern on the other side.



Finally I spent some time finishing up the scales on the nose.
I know I wanted to do some sort of dominant plate design so I just started shaping the cement and this is what happened:



I really like how it is coming along.

To recap, we went from this:

To this: all in one day.

Let's see what today brings.
If I am lucky it'll be the last day of sculpting.
Then WE PAINT!

***************

And here is an amazing picture of Ethan from this weekend's birthday party. I was off running SMO but Patrick told me Ethan put on some sunglasses and wore one of Pat's visors and just decided to start calling himself "Jonathan the First Grader." (Ethan is in kindergarten.)

Jessie walked by and said "Hey Whitey Bulger" and when I saw this picture I could not stop laughing.

My nephew totally looks like Whitey Bulger!

Amazing.

Sorry about the repeat pictures in this post!

I'm off!

SMO Round 4

It's my senior year of SMO, you guys.

Liz C leads us off!

SMO, or Slow Motion to the Ocean is the relay race team I belong to started back in 2010 by Alecia. She brought together what was then a random assortment of people and what has since become a second family of friends.

SMO is how I met Kirsten.

Of the original 14 only 6 of us First Year's remain.
Alecia, Myself, Kirsten, Fay, Alexis, and Amy D.

Alexis, Liz C, Kirsten, Amy D, Kelly, Me, Alecia, Beth, Fay (top) Robyn (bottom), JEanne, Liz F, Liz A (Mirta is taking the pic) 

Some of the current SMO's have been with us for three years (Mirta, Kelly and Liz F) some are returning for their second year (Liz C, Liz A) and this year we had our first official Driver-become-Runner graduation in Robyn who drove my van, Van 1, last year.  And some are new (Jeanne, this year's Van 1 driver). We had our first returning SMO; Beth, who missed a year and came back to run this one with us.

All in all it was an amazing time.

As a Fourth Year this is starting to feel like old hat.

Getting my paints ready

The nervousness I felt my first (and even second) year running SMO is completely gone. I knew I wouldn't be the fastest runner, I wouldn't do the most mileage, but no one cares. We are in it for the experience, for the smelly vans and the delirium and the pushing your body hard --not alone but surrounded by women you love that love you. There is laughing and too many jokes and ridiculous videos and so many pictures.

I'll share some of them with you.

I made this year's logo twice.

Once the computer ate my design and I had to start from scratch. In the interest of saving time I hand lettered the Slow Motion -Ocean part and added the BOSTON ribbon.
I thought that was a nice touch. The front of the sweat shirts have a distressed SMO 13 in Ambercrombie style letters that I think look great. Those were Alexis' idea.

It was also her idea to have the logo printed low enough on the back that you can see the whole thing even when the hoods are down.

Which was brilliant.


Here we are as a team waiting at the starting line for our 9:30am launch.
Liz C is getting pumped in her running outfit, the rest of us are trying not to freeze to death.



Last year it was damn near balmy at the starting line.
Alexis was Runner 1 and she ran in a little tank top and short-shorts.

This year as I tried to paint the vans with our assortment of watercolors (I try new artsy things on the vans every year) I kept dropping my paint brush because my hand would lock up frozen.

Here I am getting down to one of our SMO mixes.
(Liz C spliced this gem together sometime around day 2 when she and I (runner positions 1 and 2) were already done racing and waiting for the rest of the team to finish their last legs as well):



So that was fun.
Random craziness.

As in past years we checked off our legs once we had completed them.

This year we chose creative ways to do the checking.

I used a skull and crossbones doodle complete with x's and stink lines over the 2 and 3 legs to indicate how painful and hard they were for me. (The more x's and stink lines, the harder and more painful). 

 Total mileage of this year's race was 191 and change. I ran 15(ish) of those miles.

Right at the end they changed my 4.7 miler to a 3.2 miler and gave that leftover mile to Amy D who was already running a 7 miler. Poor Amy.

But once they told me I had one less mile to do I was all:

YES! 

Ha.


Finally, if you want in on an inside joke we had mid-SMO I will share with you this ridiculous video.
We laughed far too loudly and far too long about it.

(It's the cloud of coughed up cinnamon that kills me every time.)




Peace out cub scouts,

Dragon Tail (Part 2)

I am getting big chunks of this sculpture done. It's exciting!

Yesterday I got the belly and scales laid in pretty well.

Matt and I devised a plan to support the top heavy sculptures in such a way that I will still be able to work on them without the constant fear I have of knocking them over and shattering all my hard work.

In Process

I have to actually get some work done that I've been neglecting here at Matt's Auto so I won't get to make a mess back there until this afternoon.

Here are some more pics (and video) of the progress so far.

(Back to work!)

Dragon Tail (Part 1)

Yesterday was an extremely productive day.

 Leaning too far to the side

I managed to get the tail form bent into an upright position (it was leaning too far to one side and would never have stood up on it's own) which involved Matthew and the exhaust pipe bender, a heavy duty file and a bit of repositioning.

Then Matt and JC helped me remove the Dragon head from its base momentarily so that Matt could cut a section of pipe off the base mount which will lower the sculptures' center of gravity and also bring it down just enough so I can sculpt the details of the head without standing on a step ladder.



Then, the hardest and least fun part of this whole process began.


I had to form the sharp wire mesh netting to fit around the tail form. This mesh is what the cement will stick to and help give the sculpture it's rigidity and shape. It's important for me to get the wire mesh as close to the form as I can. The curl of the tail is a beast, though, and all the little nicks and cuts and scrapes all over my hands today are a stinging testament to how not-great I am at this particular part of the process.

I stayed late shaping the base layer last night.
Today I will start molding the details of the tail, the curl of the underbelly-bits, the scales, the shape of the tail tip.

This is the fun stuff.

I added some big scales to the bench part to create visual uniformity between the pieces so it'll look like one continuous animal. 

 

 

All three pieces as we start the day, today

Okay, back at it!

Happy Tuesday.

DragonRedux

Hello friends,

Today has been productive.

I spent the whole day sculpting the scales onto my Dragon Bench and weighing the pros and cons of possibly painting this guy when he is fully formed.

For now though I will simply leave you with pictures of the work in process:

I began by mixing up what was left of my last bag of Type-S Mortar from last October (or thereabouts) and laying in some scales. I didn't have much of a plan in mind. Just slapped on the mortar and shaped it as best I could.

When it came time to do the top of the bench I thinned the mortar to make it soupier than it normally is and had JC come out and sit down (I put a garbage bag over the mortar so his butt would not get wet) then I had him really grind his bottom into the cement so I could shape the seat to fit a human buttocks more comfortably than it otherwise might.

It remains to be seen whether or not that effort was A) really necessary or B) will actually pay off in the end. The payoff would be (of course) a comfortable bench but as Matt and I were discussing mid-day today, I could just put a cushion down on top of it. Or better yet (I suggested) I can make some sort of saddle to hitch to the dragon which would keep up the effect.

Imagine that.
A saddle on a Dragon to sit in whilst warming yourself around a fire pit.

(I best think of non-flammable materials from which to make said saddle)

And VOILA!

Tomorrow I will come in and start working a fresh on the Dragon head. 

Dragon is capitalized because, as of now, Dragon is it's name. 

Though the head looks a bit horse-ish.

That will all be remedied soon enough.

Here's a video:

Enjoy!

Goodnight,

T