Midnight Art Building Adventure

   Late the other night I left my paint brushes in my painting locker in the art building and I needed them for homework. I grabbed Stephanie and Chelsea Garmon and made them come with me, little did we know it would be a little adventure. The art building is great with huge windows and filled with the strangest things. We went to the painting studio first.

My favorite shoes. If you haven't caught on by now, I'm real short. 

This is Chelsea. What a cool cat she is. See that pocket? She sewed it herself. 

Stephanie in her new Sherlock shirt. 

There's this weird new section in the art building which is a hallway painted with weird circus types. But we loved it. 

        Then I took them down to the print lab. Printmaking is my focus for my art major. I started this project a few weeks ago which has been a great experience. Printmaking is so much about the process, so many things are permanent or stubborn and everything takes a very long time. In this project though I had a very different sort of process all together which required me to work quickly but with great care. 

         I found a dead robin on campus (good thing the purse contents glamour shot wasn't that day). I knew it needed to be in a project. Initially I thought about giving it to a friend in the ceramics department to make a mold of it. But then looking at the feathers I knew I wanted to print off of it. Directly off of the carcass. So that night I took it to the print lab and tried it. 

       I would daub ink onto the body and then hand press it onto sekishu paper. It required me manipulating the body in a slightly forceful manner, daubing with pressure to apply enough ink, stretching wings, adjusting the head and neck, pressing firmly. I had to work quickly for the body would only stay flexible and (relatively) non smelly for a number of hours. It was a difficult process, I tried to be ginger with my actions but when I heard the first bones snap I stopped, teared up, and pressed on. After that I let bones and tendons snap with less mourning but was teary all the same. I would fold his wings over his body, under his body. Tilt the head at extreme angles, push hard on the skull to get the impressions of the eye socket. Pull the feet at full length to get solid linear shapes next to the ephemeral looking feathers.  By the end of the process his wings and head were sadly limp and mangled. Eventually his feathers were pulled out by ink and I could not use him any more. I wasn't sure If I was exploiting this body or if I did the best I could. But the thought of being responsible for the mangling of a body was not a good one. However the results were quite beautiful. So my morality and my art-hungry self battled that night. Ultimately I think the pieces are lovely. I buried the bird the next morning and felt right.