1035 Worrisome.

I’ve had a weird urge to sculpt recently. Longtime readers will know that I actually spent most of my school time learning to sculpt in a fine arts capacity. I haven’t done it seriously in years. The last thing I partially sculpted was Memnom Vanderbeam from Starslip Crisis. I didn’t bother to cook it. It would have been cool though.

There were two art guys teaching where I went to “college” one was a fairly skilled painter, the other a sculptor who was, in my opinion, terrible. Terrible in a way that suited his place in the world. At the time, however, he made it seem like you could really fake your way into getting paid to do fartsy art. I’ve always been sort of at odds with fine artists, and other artists in generally if I’m honest. The big concept weirdness and whatnot of the gallery scene has always seemed like a long con to me; a facade of words somehow holds together the nonsense of asking for thousands of dollars for a pile of candy… It irritates me. I don’t think that kind of thing is without value. I’ll give you that the thinking something like that may cause could be good in some way, but fuck, anyone can heap candy in the middle of a room.

Crazy paintings, weird sculptures, or what have you, are only going to ever be worth the materials and time spent working to me. No ammount of big idea can tack on thousands of dollars of value to something. That said, if I could figure out how to get in on the con I would. I have no qualms about seperating a fool from money.

I went on an art trip to Taos when I was in High School. Two actually. I don’t remember them very well, but I do remember parts as sort of a conglomeration memory. In one place there was a sculpture that Mike Judge made of a drive in theatre with a drawing of Beavis & Butt-head as the screen. It was pretty shady seeming. Lots of the stuff needed a speech to make them seem to have value. Never a good sign. The kid I was buddied with was trying to impress the girl keeping an eye on the place by commenting about stuff. Eventually he made some snide remark about some stupid looking thing and she was like “My mother made that.” Which caused me to laugh my loudest most sincere laughter. It was such a perfect movie like moment it was instantly seared into my mind. I’m sure I’ve told this story before. It’s one of my favorites.

Anyway, I looked at a lot of stuff on those trips but was never able to shake the idea that 75% of the artists were just trying to pull a fast one on everyone. There was one gallery that had really cartoony sculptures of coyotes and stuff. It was very similar to the kinds of things I was making at the time and my teacher made a point of showing me. He was like “See there’s a place for your style too.” I thought that was nice of him. Even then I wanted everything to be super colorfull and saturated.

Whatever. I don’t know where I was going with all of that. I might see if I have some Sculpy around and try to make some of the little dragon guys Terezi plays with in Homestuck. I think they are cute.

Every so often I see dolls on DA and it makes me want to try and make one. I don’t really sew though, so I don’t know how I’d clothe one. It’s just a weird fantasy I entertain sometimes.