A Little Show-and-Tell

Today was a beautiful, sunny day.  I walked into my studio at just the right time this afternoon to see a crazy disco-ball lighting effect going on, thanks to this funky sculpture from my college days that I re-worked with a mirrored mosaic surface several years ago.  The sun was shining through a window at just the right angle to hit "the head".  By the time I got the camera it wasn't as spectacular, but you can still see the flecks of light on the walls in this picture:

Tomorrow if it is sunny I'll try to get a more spectacular shot of the light show.

December 3rd last year our crawlspace flooded from the amazing amount of rain that fell overnight and throughout the day.  A lot of my old artwork and art supplies were stored down there, and I found myself quickly clearing out everything on the floor as the water started coming up through the floor drains.  Thus my old artwork like college paintings and drawings and this sculpture came out of hiding!  Unfortunately one of the plastic bins that had all sorts of collected paper stuff in it had a crack in the bottom and leaked.  The up-side to that was I had to spread everything out to dry and came upon the following newspaper article that included a picture and write-up about this very sculpture:

That was published in May of 1986 on the front page of the Nevada Herald of Nevada, Mo.  Nevada is where Cottey College is located, where I went for my first two years of college.  How exciting it was to see that picture on the front of the paper, even if it was in a town of only 10,000!

Earlier that school year I had discovered the top half of a mannequin behind a building in downtown Nevada and had to keep it, of course.  I ended up working it into this sculpture for the scupture course that I was taking at the time.  The coolest thing about this sculpture was that I learned to weld in order to make the pyramid-shaped frame for suspending the mannequin head.  I originally glued shards of glass into slots I cut into the surface of the head.  Then several years ago I took those off and covered the surface of the head with 1/4-inch squares of mirror, set into thin-set cement.  I LOVE mosaics.  And I think this project gave me the confidence to tile the floor in the studio, believe it or not.

It's funny how adding the mirror mosaic made the sculpture more tolerable/less freaky.  I think it used to literally freak-out my kids when they would see it in the attic of our old garage.  At the time that I made it my mom claimed that it was my interpretation of how I felt about her.  I think she was at least half teasing!  It is definitely one of my favorite projects, so I'm happy to have been inspired to show it here.