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Giant cross-section flower

Cross-section flower

My third project for Floriade was making a giant model flower in cross-section, to be the central display in CSIRO’s Division of Plant Industry’s information tent. I really enjoyed making this, too. Some projects go really easily and this was one of those!

The petals were the main challenge, but I decided pretty quickly to use a molded felt technique that I had previously tried with some masks. Essentially you saturate felt in white PVA glue, mold it to the shape you want, and then let it dry. It adopts the shape and becomes fairly hard and plasticised in a way. You can paint it, too, and the way the paint bleeds through the felt can be used in different ways, some quite sensuous. In this case, I made a petal shape in clay and each petal had a double layer with some aluminium flat bar running up the middle to give it extra rigidity. The interesting thing about the technique apart from the obvious texture, is that the felt can be stretched and pulled but remain in one piece. In this respect natural wool felt is much better to work with because it pulls and moves much more than synthetic felt. But synthetic is okay if you don’t have a choice.

I think the flower may end up being displayed in the CSIRO Discovery Centre, where some of my insect models are too; I hope so.

Espresso coffee hats

Espresso coffee hats

Making these fun hats was another of my Floriade projects. I enjoyed making them and was really happy with how they turned out. They were made for the performance group The Bunch of Posers, who in this guise are called Acappellacino.

To make them I started out by making the cup shape upside down, with a mixture of a garden pot and a garden hanging basket and clay. I started paper mache-ing it, but realised that the edges were going to curl when they dried, so instead I made a pattern from the shape (you put alfoil over it, masking tape it so it stays in the shape, then cut it into sections so
it becomes a 2D flat pattern). I could have made a small model and done the same and scaled it up if I hadn’t started down the paper mache track to begin with. Once I had the pattern, I cut it out of a particular thin dense type of foam sheeting and glued it up into the cup shape.

The top cup rim and the foam is made from a circle of polystyrene, so it gives the foam rigidity at the top. The saucer is slightly thicker foam, and the rim of the saucer is a ring of a kind of tubular insulation foam that the building trade uses (its called PEF backing rod, and its like those lengths of foam kids play with in swimming pools – pool noodles they are called here. But you can buy it in different diameters if you know where to go for building supplies.) The ring gave the saucer a nice rigidity. You can see the cups in the raw making phase in this picture.

Then it has muslin spray-glued on to the foam to give it a protective surface and kind of bring it all together. Then paint, with a bit of latex added to make it stick well.

The coffee pot was made in much the same way, just from foam. I made a pattern straight from my neighbour’s espresso pot and scaled it up (what I should have done with the cup, too!). However it does have a ring of light aluminium flat bar in the top rim and a couple of aluminium bars from the ring up into the lid to make the open lid possible and strong. The steam is dacron, the wadding stuff they put in quilts, with a wire through it.

The coffee cups just sit on your head like sombreros, but the coffee pot needed a chin stap which I filched from a bike helmet.

Here’s a video of the group in action, singing “You’re the Cream in my Coffee’. On my computer the sound only streams smoothly once its played through once.


(Click on the photo)

Warehouse Circus: Carnivale Puppet Parade at Floriade

Resting

Over the last few months most of my time has been taken up with a number of projects to do with Floriade, Canberra’s month-long annual spring flower festival, which finished last weekend. My biggest scale project was taking workshops with a group of kids from the Warehouse Circus, collaboratively designing and helping them to make some big puppets for a carnivale puppet parade during Floriade.

Robin Davidson was the artistic director, bringing together the eight characters the kids had proposed (The Dude (from the circus logo), the Evil Gardener, two tulips, The Pie, Mirrorman, Mini Me, and a pirate) into a kazoo band.

We used quite a broad range of building techniques and materials, many of which the kids hadn’t had experience with before. Six of the characters were on stilts, some on extension stilts, and I was really impressed with how well the kids took on the physical and mental challenges of performing the characters, and the level of confidence they developed.

Video clip: Click picture to see the Warehouse Circus Carnivale Puppet Parade.

Smile on your bother: OneWebDay

Face-1

OneWebDay, 22 September, is a global celebration of online life. I was hoping to make a couple of big puppets or sculptures for the day, but I have three current work projects that all culminate at exactly that time, so I am not sure if I will get anything together in time to use offline on the day. I do have some images (see below instead) up of what I have had in mind, and have been working on. This kind of brings together my appreciation of the blogging medium and Dave Winer‘s role in developing it, and the richness I feel from being able to see what friends, puppet builders, crafters, street artists and puppeteers are doing around the world. (Thanks to Amy for the post title – it’s perfect!)

Perhaps puppeteers could pick up the idea and put on a show in their town on the day? Perhaps something similar to Project Puppet‘s Glorified Sock Puppet Contest could be run in honour of OneWebDay? Perhaps Swazzle‘s Sean Johnson could encourage his peas to send a special greeting, or other puppeteers record a video message with their puppets? Perhaps, Kath, WhipUp could prompt crafters to become enthused in some way? It’s probably ripe ground for Extreme Crafters, too. And artist trading cards. And so on… Perhaps there are bloggers here in Canberra who have some ideas for the day?

OneWebDay

Updated links 2015

Mainframe computer suit

Waistcoat

Here are some photos of the mainframe computer suit I made this past week. It was for the theatre group A Bunch of Posers, for a performance at an event that marked the closing down of the Australian Bureau of Statistics mainframe computer. The waistcoat and back are my favourites.

Puppet face

Face

I just love sculpting clay and papermache, my very favourite work processes.

Pink shoes

Pink shoes

Some large pink snake-skin shoes I made recently for Jigsaw Theatre Company’s production Little Brother Big Sister, design by Imogen Keen. I had fun with the curly thing at the back.

Leafcutter ant

Leafcutter ant marquette

I’m getting quite fond of this little leafcutter ant I made recently. (It’s only about 15 cm long). I might get to make some big ones later this year.