something for ME

fun with plaster cloth

Tonight I got my hands back into plaster cloth -- I really missed it!

I didn't know what I was going to make or work on...I just needed to play with the plaster cloth.

I crashed the first thing I started on because I just wasn't feeling it. It got waaaaay too wet and floppy.

THIS guy, however...I luuurve him, I loave him, I luff him...two F's. (Thank you, Woody Allen!)

This guy is made from that very long, very hard, very wonderful cardboard tube that my friend Juana gave me a while back (like back in June maybe). I knew I wanted it to be a long snake that I would hang from my studio ceiling -- not to be confused with the Studio Snake that I still want to make.

This guy is a little over six feet long right now. I had to balance/rest his head against my shoulder and work kind of quickly to get the bend in his neck the way I wanted it. I have already started coming up with some names for him...but I haven't decided on one yet.

This guy is totally different from the Studio Snake. This guy is reminding me of the very first snake I brought in the house when I was a kid. (I had an accomplice, of course.) That real life snake was a garter snake that was about four feet long. He was over by the swing set on the woodsier side of our driveway.

I had next to no knowledge of snakes back then...except that it would make my parents and aunt ka-ray-zee if they saw it. Naturally, my accomplice and I had everything "figured out"...I wasn't planning on keeping the snake, I just wanted to watch it for a while and then put it back outside. There was an empty refrigerator box in the garage and we brought that box into my closet, laying it down sideways so we could watch the snake move and do snakey things. I don't remember what we needed to do suddenly, but we were called out of my room so we stood the box upright. Ha!

Ten minutes later we hurried back to our temporary guest to find that he had -- somehow -- climbed up onto the top edge of the box. Cripes! How the heck did he do that? We got a couple of chairs, put the snake back down in the box, stood the box back up and then stood on the chairs to observe the snake wedging itself into one of the inside corners of the box and just simply sliding UP the wall of the box and up over the edge...effortlessly...no problem. We. Were. Amazed.

And that was the end of that. We were done observing snakes and put him back outside where we found him by the swing set on the other side of the driveway. We took the 'fridge box back to the garage and went about our business.

Much to our utter amusement when we came back later that afternoon -- there were my mom and aunt outside in the driveway going ka-ray-zee...that snake was on the front porch halfway up the front door, looking like he wanted back inside...and kind of looking like he might use the door knob and open the door himself.

My hysterical mom and aunt paid us each very well to take the snake away from the house. We took the snake down to the road that led to the beach...we put the snake into the woodsy area by the lagoon. We never saw him again.

Those were good times...LOL.