More sculpture making with Miles Gavin

So my classes with Miles have been continuing over the last few weeks but because I've been a massively lazy blogger recently I've not been posting progress. BUT how it has progressed! I have really fallen for this medium and I'm already looking at future projects based on what I learnt with Miles.
I did a few more sketches so I could get my colour right and look at all the details I wanted to include (eyelashes, ribbons, and gems)

We then made the basic structure of my cat which involved Miles using a laser saw! It was way too threatening for me to do on my own so he covered that part. I'm sorry but I just don't trust myself with an electric saw or any power tools, I would be a danger to myself and anyone in the surrounding area. I then made this weird looking featureless cat thing and whacked a load of resin all up on it. MIlliput is a versatile 2 part modelling resin which dries in about 45 minutes and goes rock solid.

The next session we carefully put together the facial features, I wanted to give it big bulgy anime style eyes and they are literally the majority of it's face. The face-making process wasn't challenging at all, but you do have to consider little details what you wouldn't normally think about like eyelids and creases on the nose and where whiskers go, but these little details are what really makes the piece what it is. And a stuck a cute little heart gem right on its forehead too.

In the latest session we did some painting! The cat is spray painted all over to create a smooth quick-drying finish. Then the details are painted using a really fine brush. I've somewhat obviously opted for pinks and blues cuz, well, pink cat. This was all done in a step-by-step guide instructed by Miles which had obviously been perfected over his many years of painting animal faces. We then whacked on a layer of spray varnish and my kitty was all shiny!

I'm loving my cat's Sphinx type look but it's all lumpy and bumpy so it'll be getting a nice layer of fur in our last session next week!

Encountering Corpses: Jewelled Skeletons & Getting Pissed at Church

Paul Koudounaris (from Heavenly Bodies)

I was introduced to the personality and charm of Paul Koudounaris before his beautiful photography, when my bestie Jessica informed me she was talking to a dude from LA online who's obsessed with cats and has a house full of taxidermy and I would love him. I initially dismissed it as Jess being her weird little self as always. But when browsing tumblr and Paul's Heavenly Bodies work came up on my dashboard with 12,000+ notes attached, I realised it was something more special than just being weird. Soon after his book release I was reading articles on Vice, seeing more of these images being shared around online and met his lovely friends from LA Mike Odd and Sugarpie (who came over for Rebellion Festival and seemed to enjoy the tacky horror of Blackpool more than anyone who's ever been to Blackpool.) All the while I was becoming more intrigued about this mysterious photographer.
So I was obviously very excited when Jess started to put things in motion to get Paul's photography exhibited in Manchester. She put Helen Malarky in touch with him, (Institute of Humanities and Social Science Research project manager at MMU) and plans were forming to hold the Encountering Corpses exhibition at Sacred Trinity Church. I got my tickets for the opening night in January, it sold out quickly and soon everyone I knew wanted to see this work.

  

The exhibition consists of 12 large scale photos of charnal houses and jeweled skeletons which Paul had taken around Europe, part of his 2 published works Heavenly Bodies and The Empire of Death. The was also a small sectioned off room showing the work of MMU's Sue Fox. Sue gained access to autopsies, mortuaries and crematoriums to create Post Mortem, first published 17 years ago, creating graphic images of limbs and corpses with a sort of soft harsh-ness. The church was also scattered with pieces by community artists in response to the exhibition and soundtracked by the murder ballads of Lee Mellor. We also had some magnificent skull cake from the gorgeous Annabel de Vetten of Conjurers Kitchen (who got very excited about the Frida Kahlo skirt I was wearing and stuck stickers on my boobs.)

Sacred Trinity Church

Skull cakes by The Conjurer's Kitchen

Cake cushion with chocolate skull

Me and Paul Koudounaris

The following night we went to a goth club night at the church which was... interesting. The idea of a club night which was in a church near my flat and bring your own beer (obvs churches don't having alcohol licenses so they just trust you to drink responsibly) was very intriguing. What with me not being a massive goth I didn't know much of what was being played, but they did lay down some Huey Lewis and the News! And there were UV lights, weird dressed up child skeletons, and we were getting pissed in church.
  ENCOUNTERING CORPSES RUNS 28TH MARCH - 10TH APRIL MON-FRI 10AM-4PM

Mother's Day Cross Stitch

Happy Mother's Day! Mama Buttons enjoys my cross stitches so I made her a "HOME is where the MUM is" one. It was fairly simple to do (always struggle with centering though!) Got the inspiration from Pinterest when browsing mum/ daughter quotes. They're always so horribly naff though, I really hate it when people take these random objective quotes that someone else has anonymously written and layered it over some twatty image and everyone's like ERMAHGERD THAT'S SO ME (classic example, "Keep Calm and..." or Tumblr blogs like justgirlythings, bleugh)

Another classic Mother's Day
cross stitch from a few years ago...
still in the kitchen!

ANYWAY, I saw this quote and all that kind of went out the window. I was thinking about just before I moved a couple of weeks ago, I heard a statistic about people having on average 8 houses in their entire lifetime. I'm 26 in July and I'm on my 10th! But none of them have really felt like "home" apart from where my mum lives (to be fair, she's also moved twice in the last 18 months haha) I love my weekly visits back home, even if I do have to sleep on the sofa and listen to my parents bicker about what to watch on TV! Tonight in stead of doing that, we all sat in the living room and chatted and caught my brother Joey in Cologne on FaceTime. My family are my best friends, they make me laugh, they're all different personalities and they're just happy people who are nice to be around!

Me & Mama Buttons
May 2013 (not drunk)

Today I'm thanking my mum for being tolerant. Tolerant of my many stupid hair colours and fashion phases, but still being seen outdoors with me. Tolerant of me having to sleep on the sofa for 2 months when I split up with my boyfriend and didn't have anywhere to live. Tolerant of the daft things that I say and do on a daily basis and still laughing. I've made a lot of bold decisions of the last few years and she has been nothing but supportive of any path I have chosen. I'm not a shining example of the perfect daughter, I don't have a degree or a "proper job" or a mortgage, but she's really proud of me and my 2 brothers. She's happy because we're all happy, and we're all happy because we've been raised happy. And for that I would say she's a pretty amazing mum!

Manchester Bee Cross Stitch

My latest creative creation, a Manchester bee cross stitch for Miki's birthday. Fairly simple to do and based on a pattern I found online, would like to make them more often as presents!

Making Sculptures with Miles Gavin

www.milesgavin.co.uk

Miles Gavin is my colleague, my good friend and a fantastic sculpture artist. Originally from Stoke on Trent, ceramics is in his blood and he's got the weird thumbs to prove it (srsly, they bend backwards, it's gross, but apparently it's an odd genetic mutation that's specific to Stoke?!) He's got some fancy Ceramics Design degree from Central Saint Martins and has done shit loads of scholarships and junk. He has interned for the amazing Elizabeth McGrath in LA and created some wonderful masterpieces with her. Basically, he's fucking rad with moldable materials n clay n that.

 

Miles' most recent finished piece

I follow his Facebook page and his other side projects (he's also extremely talented with Photoshop) Miles recently took the plunge and decided to rent out a small studio space, near his home just outside Manchester city centre. When he put a status up asking for a guinea pig for some sculpture making classes, I sprang at the opportunity. I've never dabbled in sculpture before and I've always wanted to work with Miles, plus his studio is like 10 minutes from my flat. So after work one night last week, we went down to his Salford sanctuary. His studio is in an old typical northern pub hotel, it's awesome and creepy with classic deep red, gold and mahogany decor and vintage Guinness advertisements everywhere. Once there, he showed me his latest piece which I would be recreating my own version of and the different materials we will be using. This was great, everything I had seen completed pictures of was being stripped down to just wire and polystyrene and I was feeling enthusiastic about making what I could see in my head a reality.

Pizza, wine and sketching

We then went to his for the luxury of pizza and wine. Miles had given me my very own sketchbook to draw sketches of what I had in mind, make note anything I liked from other artists we were looking at and look at the structure of our classes. We started off by looking at artists who he has been influenced by. In particular Elizabeth McGrath stood out a lot. As a good friend of his, he has talked about her work with me before (some of which he had even worked on.) I'd never looked at it in detail, but the books he showed me (Everything That Creeps and Incurable Disorder) were beautiful, she's clearly very creative and has a keen eye for detail in her work, I loved it! His other reference material were:

• Jessica Joslin - "Strange Nature" Creating hybrid beasts out of brass and bone
• Scott Musgrove - "The Late Fauna of Early North America" Wide bright-eyed paintings and sculptures of creatures
• Juztapoz: Dark Arts - Collection of contemporary weird and dark shit
• High Fructose: Collected Edition 1 - Modern, fresh, colour saturated collection of art prints
• Camille Rose Garcia - "Tragic Kingdom" I can't describe her work better than her Facebook Page description: 'creepy cartoon children living in wasteland fairy tales are critical commentaries on the failures of capitalist utopias. Creative influences include Phillip K. Dick, William Burroughs, Henry Darger,Walt Disney, as well as politically aware bands like The Clash and Dead Kennedys'

Although I loved all of these different artists and got loads of ideas while looking through the reference books (particularly McGrath's use of embellishment with bows and gems and the huge high gloss eyes she uses with eyelashes) I had my own ideas. I love how Miles' work is like really cute but also kind of grotesque and I wanted to take that cute element and make it something hyper hyper cute. I was thinking of the round, curved, squidgy, cartoon shapes I see when I look at the work of Ash Davies and Rachel Baldwin (which is like, daily, thanks Instagram.) I was visualising a cat/ dog creature with a cute :3 style mouth and anime eyes... pink and glittery of course and with whiskers. So together we created a few preliminary sketches, talked about the structure of our classes and after a few more glasses of wine, we finally settled on my chubby cat creature

Miles went through with me how we will be making the skeleton-esque structure for my little fur baby, which we will be doing this week! This will be the first time I've used resin and I can't wait to get started. He has opened my eyes to a new medium of creativity which I'm feeling very enthusiastic about, and I can't wait for our next session on Wednesday!

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