This is a great example of one of my (typical) bad examples of my photos. The worst thing is that it's one of the only pictures I have of this work (as is typical of me, I got it finished in time to pack it away to take directly to an art show where it sold almost immediately (and too cheaply, I admit)!
Learn more about this work below.
I don't know about other artists, but I feel that if I had the ability needed to succeed in business affairs, I probably wouldn't be an artist in the first place -- or at least not a starving one! After a weekend of working nearly non-stop on "art stuff" it is so discouraging to see that all I have to show for it is a website blog entry complaining on getting my Etsy store started up with a lousy four pieces on the site and some shameless self-promotion on social medias.
Yeah, these are the times when I wish I had a wife, an assistant, or an agent to pawn these matters off on. Then I could get busy doing my art - instead of my art business. But at least my Etsy shop is started. And since I am facing spine surgery soon, and will be stuck avoiding painful activities like movement (or not) of any kind, I will have the time to list more items that are completed. One of these days, I hope to be so caught up with the modern technologies available to me that I will be able to photograph and post items AS I complete them! What a concept!
This work is one of my favorite Steampunk 3-D paintings so far. I had the vision that this man from Victorian times has lost the love of his life - his wife of blah-blah years. He is a Darwin-like biologist, who becomes a bit daft with the idea of 'rebuilding' his beloved.
HOW'S IT MADE?
It was made when some nice neighbor cat had the good sense to leave a bird kill in my yard, that I didn't find until it was a perfect skeleton. This painting started out with a background of papers that reminded me of a typical Victorian home. He hasn't bothered to contain his work to his laboratory - it's right there in the parlor. I incorporated some spectacular pieces of vintage doll furnishings like a treadle sewing machine and an oil lamp. I made some furnishings like the cabinet, table &shelves with pieces of scrap wood, painted and unpainted to look used and old. (Cabinet on left has miss-matched knobs; I had a heck of a time getting that simple table to stand up to the weight of the lamp!) The sewing machine is being used for flesh and fabric - which some fabric being left for more work later.
The dress form he is using to create his bride is familiar to anyone who sews; it was cut out from a needle package and decoupage into shape then. Random household findings, such as the drapery hook that was altered to be its legs, create all sorts of little parts. The bird's skull is perched above it attached by a spring - you can see the glass eye (bead) hanging from a copper wire and other wires coming in/out of the creature to a weird machine on the wall. I made the machinery to look as though it's some kind of electrical running apparatus that will gain its power from the next bolt of lightning it's trying to attract from the wires that lead out the window from a train set.
Aside from torturous hours of work (which probably didn't help my need for cervical neck surgery in a week,) this terrible picture doesn't show anyone the amazing little details that really filled this work out. Things like the tiny little jars one with a little frog inside, and one broken with some bloody little hearts (glass beads) spilling out over the books that are stacked and blood splatters and drips to puddle on the floor under the table. There's also the dauggerotype I made from a print of his young miss and glazed into a frame meant for square jewelry cabochons - you can even see where it came from its long-hanging spot on the wall. You miss the cute little creepy monkey on the shelf - he was a practice experiment w/watch parts - and now serves as lab assistant - and is wired to the machinery! You can barely make out an arm (doll arm) on the bottom shelf of the table, or the skeletonized arm with anatomical alterations on it (pen parts I think). There is the most delicious "poster" of human anatomy behind the table. The outside of the frame is adorned with little decoupage pieces that exemplify the great love of this couple's long and great love; including their wedding pic with their faces magnified by the clear glass cabochon.
And since I am writing this without the benefit of good picture documentation, and a badly broken, partially eidetic memory, I am sure I am missing or forgetting other tiny little details that I slaved over! This brings one saying to mind, “A picture is worth a thousand words." I could have saved both of us that much reading if only I'd had a good picture of my work in the first place. Yes, I hate the busyness of business.