The Winding Path To Creating a Story With Art

                                     

                                             New Direction

Cleaning up my art studio always produces new directions in my projects.  As I reorganize and open drawers that have been closed for a while, I find tools I've forgotten.  

Metal Creator

This cleaning session uncovered The Metal Creator I purchased in a crowd funding several years ago.  It was invented by Bill Struve and consists of a foot pedal, a CO2 canister, two tubes and a regulator.  The purpose of this tool is to save hand stress as the CO2 pushes the metal clay paste through a syringe.  If I were using a typical syringe, my hand would push the plunger as the clay is extruded.  That gets pretty tiring after a while.  

When I first purchased this tool, I also purchased 3 syringes of bronze metal paste.  Fortunately I used one of the syringes and stored the other 2.  One of those syringes was still a good consistency.  I hooked up the tool to try it out -thinking it was time to use it or sell it!  Then I discovered the CO2 canister was empty.  Where to get it filled?  A gas company one town over was able to fill it for about $6.  Now I'm ready!

But what to make?  Since I love birds and experimenting I began with bird shapes and discovered I could make loops and squiggles!  As I formed an odd shaped bird, Peter walked by and said, "That looks like a diatryma!"  "What?"  When I looked it up on Wikipedia I found it was also called a 'Gastoris' or an extinct primitive flightless bird  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastornis  

I made 3 gastornis figures, let them dry, placed them on a slab of bronze metal clay and cut out a shape with not much in mind as to the final project.  As I sat and thought (I tend to do that a lot) about this bird, what it ate, how it lived, what it might have done.  A plan was forming!

The clay was fired in my kiln at 1487 degrees F in activated carbon for a total of 4 hours (2 hours at 1000 degrees F and 2 hours at the higher temp.)   

Next I found an old piece of twisted wood from a dead tree - treasure from one of our trips in the wild!

Cleaned it, brushed it and figured out a way to hang it.  

The largest bronze plaque would become part of a totem telling a story of the gastornis bird.  As you can see from the photos, I collected things I thought he might be wanting for a nest in case he wanted to impress his female friend (colorful ribbons, shiny beads, seeds, feathers and more.)   The woven wire cord as well as the knitted crown might represent part of the woven nest.  

 

After finishing the totem, I thought how much fun it would be to have the chain, bronze plaque and feathers etc removable and wearable if one wanted.  The cup hook, placed just above the hanger in the back holds the totem in place.  

This project is a reminder to plan and work out technical problems in order to tell a cohesive story.  

My 'gastornis' bird weaves history with whimsy in storytelling with art.