The crazed dancing woman needed a prop to go along with the Dr. Who Tardis backdrop that I created back in November.  So out comes the acrylics, a bit of foam core and after a few hours work, voila, one Dalek.  He’s just under five foot high and weighs next to nothing, thanks to the foam core. A triangular piece of foam core hot glued to the back with linen strips helps it to stand upright and then fold flat for transport and storage. He will be showing up at various burlesque and belly dancing shows and I refuse to be responsible for any mass destruction behavior on it’s part.

Dalek dance prop

During a recent inventory in the storage rooms at the Mausonian Museum,  a new specimen has been brought to light after over a century and half of being hidden. This specimen was originally from a dig  in central Turkey circa 1853-1854.

The initial evaluation showed the fossilized skull and neck bones of a primitive batrachian specie. The rest of the specimen was believed to be intact but there was a fair amount of obscuring matrix that needed to be removed.  Cleaning began and eventually the bulk of the specimen began to reveal itself.  A weak solution of acetic acid was applied to help remove the more difficult limestone deposits encasing the smaller bones of the right wrist when a large flake cracked and lifted off. A dark staining of the stone was noted and cleaning proceeded to eventually reveal an elongated fifth metacarpal bordering the dark edge. The dark stain was in fact a wing membrane.  The world’s first specimen of a winged amphibian had been discovered!

As time goes on, more unusual creatures from the earths past are coming to light. This may be the first of a very strange group of prehistoric creatures that established paleontology is likely to have a bit of trouble categorizing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR and the best of whatever it is that you seek for yourself in 2010! Yep, I know it is a bit past the new year but Life has a way of sticking her fingers in my pudding and messing things up. The least of  Her meddling lately is a broken rib incurred from sword fighting. I am just going to have to learn to protect myself better! Anyway, the following is a list of the events that I am going to be involved with in the next couple of months. If you are attending, please come on by and say hello!

January 15-17 Arisia 2010 Cambridge, Ma……art show

January 29-30 Birka Market, SCA, Manchester NH……fencing

February 5-7 Templecon, Warwick, RI………..art show, puppet performance, CoC game

February 12-14 Boskone 47, Boston, MA………art show

February 26, Odditoruium, Canbridge, MA……..puppet performance.

The February 26th date at the Odditorium show will be the debut of my new poem called Ten Pound Lafitte.  It’s a rousing story about a chef and an unwilling frog. Terrance and Grimpen will be doing the performance.

Hope to see y’all about!

Two of my puppet creations, Terrance and Grimpen, who have helped me stage several plays this year have an Important Public Service Message they would like to pass on!!

Somehow the dancing mistress of the house had managed to convince the painting fool living with her to paint backdrops for her. I know the idea came out my mouth but it was placed there via telepathy. No, really. The first backdrop is for a Dr. Who themed dance number and so a painting of the Tardis on an alien planet was in order. Deadline 3 weeks.

I got hold of a roll of single unprimed duck, 100 yards long and 6 foot wide for a reasonable price and that should be enough for roughly 50 back drops.  What will drop first,  the backdrops or myself is a subject for debate. My money is on me going first.

The first hurdle was how to stretch a 7 x 6 foot canvas.  Canvas stretchers of that size are prohibitive, so I opted for 2 decently knot free pieces of pine, dimensions  8′x6″x”1.  I ripped them in half  lengthwise on the saw, sanded them and then after a flurry of measuring and squaring lines on the wall, screwed them directly into the horsehair plaster walls with long drywall screws. The only space in the entire house where this beast could have went was 6 foot 2 inches wide area between two windows in the living room. What a break! When I stepped back to look, I nearly tripped over my jaw. God Almighty, that is huge area. When the dancing mistress came home and saw the frame on the wall, her response was similar with a bit of sailor slang tossed in.

Stretching was much easier than anticipated. I used the basic canvas to stretcher rotational attachment method and everything went along nicely. Priming with gesso took about 1.5 hours with a six inch brush in one hand and a spray bottle of water in the other while balanced on the ladder. I then had to wait till night time to transfer the drawing via projector.

The palette, as you can see below, was several colors of whatever I found in the cellar from old house painting projects. Some of that stuff is near 20 years old but still working. Lots of wet paper towels,  a couple of plastic drop clothes, a few cheapo aluminum pans and we were off!  Some large cheap brushes were used to put the paint on and the painting went fast. I did three sessions for a total of about 17 hours. I am pretty impressed by the amount of pigment in house paint. I used a lot less paint than I thought I would or should have.

So now the piece is done. What is left now is to figure a way to get it off the wall and then trim the sides to be parallel and square respectively. After that,  I have to bind the edges and figure out a way for it to hang on and straight down from the rack we bought just for that purpose.  More on that later.

Illuxcon 2009 has come and gone. I have not been to a con in 3 years by my reckoning so this was a breath of fresh air. A chance to get the fires restoked and meet new folks.  I managed to sneak into the show as some others dropped out. Good for me, bad for them : ) .

Illuxcon was Intimidating. The level of the artwork was phenomenal. There were masters there in their respective fields and some fellas I have not met but all the work was way above the bar. Talk about cream of the crop. No, Pat Wilshire is not paying me to write this.

Illuxcon was Intimate. It is such a small convention you cannot help but eventually meet everyone there. There were 55 artists with a limited amount of guests that can attend. I got to meet a long time influence, Ian Miller.  I was a little leary at first as the last famous British artist I met was total pratt however Ian was sweetheart of guy with some rather introspective questions that I suspect were disguised silly at the time but made me think later on. I also got to meet a slew of other artists and a couple of absolutely incredible sculptors. And of course the best part was saying hello to old friends and just yacking.

Check these sculptors out!

Jordu Schell at http://schellstudio.com/

Thomas Kuebler at http://www.tskuebler.com/

And lastly Illuxcon is Ingenious. Quite a concept to have a convention for artists for the artists. Kudos to Pat Wilshire and his amazing staff for making for an incredible four days for me. There were so many venues, receptions, talks and demonstrations by people who know their craft that it was hard for me to stay at my table. I was falling down tired at the end of each day but eager to get back again in the morning. I hope to return next year but we shall see what the new year brings.

Other Illuxcon stuff:  John Picacio’s , a fabulous artist from Texas (bonus points for that alone ) photostream of the event. http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnpicacio/sets/72157622693706277/

OK… so my friend Lars is having a Halloween party and I was feeling a bit weird because I really didn’t want to show up sans costume so I whipped up this two hour mask. Two hours because that is how long it took and a worthwhile investment in time and energy.

I bought a cheap kitty mask at Joanne’s that had a reasonably thick fabric base. I pulled off the kitty crappola, stripping it down to the base without much trouble. I then enlarged the eyes to accommodate my delicate features and got down to getting out some colorful fleece and the good old hot glue gun.

As Lars is of Scandinavian descent , I thought a troll would pay a nice respectful nod to his heritage and went up to hunt up some  aluminum armature wire in my studio. A few minutes later on the sewing machine and voila! a long nose. In goes the armature wire and then it was stuffed not too tightly with some polyfill. The end of the armature wire was twisted into a circular base and then hot glued onto the mask being sure to leave extra material for wrinkles and such. The rest of the mask was put together with hot glue also. Pieces were approximated to the areas and then slowly stretched and glued and stretched and glued as I made my way around the edges. Fleece has a lovely stretch to it and works admirably for this kind of form fitting work. The best part of this all was the nose that could be bent into many shapes and it was during the course of the evening. People laughed and that is good.

Manuela needed a costume for Raks Spooki, New England’s largest and longest running gothic belly dance festival, featuring dancers from the homelands of HP Lovecraft, Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe.

The costume is actually two piece and I used acrylics in three different painting sessions to get a modulated grayscale going so as to lend an extra dimensionality to the bones. In addition, every corpse needs some worms! In the pictures they are in her hands. They are 18″ dowel rods painted black, with two ping pong balls hot glued for the eyes. Some light flowing material cut into strips was fed through an eye hook in the top and then a brightly colored piece of a boa was hot glued in between the eyes for an upstanding and outstanding hairdo. Manuela will be doing  a routine where she will be using the worms to dance and fly through the air. I love puppets!

For those who are interested in attending some otherworld performances:

“Raks Spooki IV” A Gothic Belly Dance Event  Sun Nov. 15th, 7pm

The Regent Theatre, 7 Medford St. , Arlington , MA

Happy Halloween! I hope y’all had the best of the best day of the year. Festivities for us actually started the night before when we  went to see  F.W.  Murnau’s  1922 classic, Nosferatu, accompanied by a musical arrangement by the Devil’s Music Ensemble. It was a real treat. The next day brought wild weather as warm winds from a southerly storm shook and bent the trees all day. Brightly colored leaves swirled everywhere. An anniversary dinner for our fourteenth year, some old black white movies and then off to a friends house for a costume party. A great day and evening!