Project Ideas

Now that I'm back in school I feel like I have so much to post about--from projects I'm working on to the research and ideas I'm coming up with.  I'll spare you some of the research as I have lists and lists of information that could potentially form into ideas, but I wanted to share a few things.

Here is a quick sketch of something I've been wanting to make--it's not a rendering but something I did to keep in my notebook. When I don't do that, I tend to forget ideas--so bad!  It's a passion flower, or passiflora incarnata.  What I'd like to do with this is a mixture of metal and wood, but I'm not sure which parts I want to carve out of wood or cast/fabricate in metal.  The only thing I am CERTAIN about is the spikes in the picture would be sterling, and very sharp.  I actually love making my work sharp, but tend to sand back it's sharpness so it can be worn.  I think it would be interesting to alternate what is wood and metal, something like having the spikes and the top stamen (the one with only three) in metal, and then have the petals and the stamen with five offshoots be carved from wood. Oh decisions!

My next idea which I think I will fabricate first is based on the idea of death and the ferryman.  Many different cultures believed the ferryman would take the souls of the dead to heaven or hell, but for a price.  Because of this, many buried their dead with money or riches to pay the ferryman and/or to use in the afterlife.  I think the imagery of placing coins on the eyes or in the mouths of the dead is very interesting.  I want to carve a face with the mouth slightly open, and then fabricate a coin that will go inside the mouth.  It would be very subtle, in such that you would only see a glimpse of the polished metal and would have to look much closer to see that it is a coin.


Lastly, something I found really intriguing was the Indonisean belief on the creation of death:

The creator of life would give gifts from heaven to it's people on earth.  One day the creator presented a man and a woman a stone, but they refused to take it and demanded for something else.  Then, the creator presented the two with a banana, which they desired greatly.  They were told that, because they chose the banana, their life would, from then on, resemble that of the banana's: they would have offspring, live their life, and eventually die.  The creator then told them if they had chosen the stone they would live their life like the stone, unchanging and immortal.  This was the creation of death and mortality on earth.

http://www.answers.com/topic/stone-and-the-banana