Classwork - Clay Models

For our first project i decided to create a sea anemone. I made it along with a crab, and a sea-star. All of the sea creatures are smoking, because sea creatures get bored just like you and me. Ignoring the realism of being able to smoke underwater, or being able to smoke with gills for that matter, I enjoy the idea of animals with human attributes. Not so much personality traits, like "oh this giraffe is really jealous." No, it's not. It's a giraffe. But i like animals that do human things, like smoke.

I am not very good at sculpting. The sea anemones turned out okay, better than I expected, but the crab. The crab was just awful. He's got fat legs, he barely has a face, and his cigar so so big to begin with that it made him fall over. Luckily i went with the sea anemone for the paper maché portion of the project. Which admittedly has not turned out as well as i would have liked. But colored paint should be able to fix that.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Benji Whalen - Fiber/Craft

Benji Whalen is a craft artist who uses different mediums to create strange human works of art. He has a series of pieces that are recreations of human arms, made of fabric and stitched together, then covered in tattoos.

He also has series' that are constructions of a pile of different people, made of clay. The piles give off a horrible mass grave feeling, but the faces seem pretty happy, which actually just makes the mass grave thing even weirder.




- Ride the Tiger

  - A Thousand Blunders II

I don't particularly love these pieces, but they are interesting. The clay pieces seem a little childish, they remind me of an old computer game i had that was claymation (it was called Who Stole Hannukah? and it was awesome.)

I like the arms, the hands are a little sloppy looking, but the main focus of the pieces is the tattoos. The tattoos are done very well, and i'm sure the arms look a lot better when they're mounted on a wall in an exhibit.

Benji Whalen