Day 30-Plaster of paris

Today I am presenting some work in progress shots of a lamp/sculpture I am making. It has already taken me about 3 days of work so far. I was first introduced to working with plaster back in high school, I think it was year ten we had to cast body parts and I cast my mum's friends pregnant belly. I used plaster again for my final HSC artwork's and as my parents will agree I also partly covered a good deal of their upstairs floorboards with plaster in the process! ha ha! for one of my HSC pieces I actually cast some babies knitted clothing in plaster and the end result looked amazing, you are able to capture all the detail of the fabric in this solid white sculptural form. Working with this medium does however prove to be quite treacherous, it sets very quickly, it easily crumbles and breaks and is very fragile. But I am a sucker for punishment... so here I go again.
I have been collecting doilies, yes those horrid knitted round things that nanna's used to make (I guess some still do) that must take soooo much tedious painstaking work (only for their grandchildren to dump them at the salvos after they pass on) and for me to buy for 20 cents each.
After collecting a pile of these from various op shops, I mixed up a batch of plaster of paris and dipped each one into the plaster before placing them in position on a female head mold I own (ensure to cover the mold in plastic bags and then sticky tape this tightly around the mold to ensure you do not get plaster on the mold and to make it easy to remove after it is dry). I have to create this head in two half pieces otherwise there is no way to take the mold out. After two days of drying I then cut off the plastic and carefully pulled the plaster away from the mold.
I then slowly poked out extra pieces of plaster from the holes in the doilies to show the patterns better. Next I will need to create the back half of the head and let this dry, before joining the two together. I am aiming for the end result of this to be a lamp, I am not sure exactly how I will achieve this but I will tackle that when I get there. The idea is that the light bulb will be inside the head (probably a low wattage for subtle lighting) and that the shadow from all of the doily patterns will then reflect onto the surrounding walls.
Its abit of a complicated one! but so far I am really happy with how it looks.
See pics below... (and a few added pics of one of the local possom's which likes to come and visit our home in the evenings)

placing the wet doilies onto the mold

the possom came to visit to see what all the fuss was about

its very tame, especially when you have fruit!

craft out

crafter-tiers

xxoo