Antigua

This is a sketch of the ruined façade of the El Carmen church in Antigua, Guatemala. Antigua was once the capitol city, but it lies in the valley below three volcanoes and has been subject to multiple earthquakes and volcanic mudflows that have required the city to be rebuilt on several occasions.

I apologize for the glare. The paper I drew it on was worn incredibly thin due to months of travel and I didn't want to risk taking it out of the frame where it now resides.

Here's a photo of the church:

Raccoon

Raton Laveur

Quelle pauvre bête, car la vie qu'il a choisi,

reste couincé dans les gouttières et les déchets moisis.

Ce bandit, si maudit,

qui doit voler sans un bruit.

Est-ce qu'il a vraiment choisi ce malheur:

de sortir dans les ténèbres et l'absence de chaleur?

A-t-il demandé de vivre

dans sa fourrure sans valeur?

Oui, bien sûr. Car quelle exsitence pourra

lui offrir autant que cette libèrté lui donnera?

Quand il sera connu partout en notoriété,

mais en solitude il vivra.

TRANSLATION:

Raccoon

What a poor beast, for the life he has chosen

remains stuck in the gutters and molding waste.

This bandit, so cursed

Who must steal without a sound.

Did he really choose this misfortune:

to emerge in the darkness and the absence of warmth?

Did he ask to live

in his worthless fur?

Yes, of course. For what existence could

grant him as much as that freedom could give?

When he will be known everywhere in notoriety,

but live in solitude.

________________________________________

French conjugation can make rhyming really hard >_< This ran through 6 drafts before it started making grammatical sense, but now I'm quite proud of it and it's a ton of fun to read aloud.

Music Monday - Take V

Steph


This is one of my first compositions on the piano. Like any beginner I started in C major, and the rest developed by ear when I realized I liked the sound of a fifth played with the third and octave above (That's the lower notes you're hearing from the left hand). I didn't know what that meant as I didn't know as much theory then, but it was something neat I could do while making use of the 10 note span my hands can cover. Some of the chords are dissonant and some of the rhythms feel a little off-kilter, but I was experimenting as all I ever really played before this was the 1-4-1-4-5-4-1 of a twelve bar blues.

For the time being this is the best recording I have although the EQ could stand some tweaking.

School:

. . . the ideal place to hide from the real world.
Today marks the end of the first week of grad school at the University of Utah. So, to commemorate the occasion with a blend of art and scientific education, here are some of the chalkboard drawings I did for the zoology lab I taught during my M.S.

They're in no particular order

More ants

To anybody seeing these posts that doesn't really know me, I study ants. I find them inspiring marvels of evolutionary innovation and they tend to have an impact on my artistic endeavors, hence many an ant post.

Today - Ant sculptures given to the members of the Ward lab at UCDavis when I volunteered there:

Click the genus names to see images of the actual ants they're based on.

Crematogaster

Eurhopalothrix

Mayriella

As with any sculpture involving many intricate appendages, the creation of these ants involved making all of the legs, stings, mandibles, antennae, and even spatulate hairs ahead of time. These were then all baked so that they would retain their shape when inserted into the main body. The legs in particular had wire running through the middle terminating with an exposed hook to ensure they would stay attached (baked clay doesn't bond very well with unbaked clay). Each head and main body segment had balled up tinfoil as a core to conserve clay and make the sculpture lighter. I do that with pretty much everything.

I also tried to make an Amblyopone almost twice the size of these while in Panama, but the humidity made the clay flaky and the the smaller parts got burnt and brittle especially due to being baked twice.

Music Monday - Take IV

The Old Box Under the Stair:


This is a scrap of a song that I wrote a couple of months ago and had the wonderful opportunity to record with the aid of Keith Bracy, a drummer of outstanding talent. He has a jazz background but plays in a number of southern-metal bands in North Little Rock, and has a penchant for recording, mixing, and producing as well. His curiosity for my concertina led me to laying down tracks of anything I could play and this song ended up emerging in a fashion I'd never played before but really liked the sound of. The working title was "Cock Mongrel" thanks to my friend Jonathan, but I feel like that didn't really suit the mood of it.
I like to imagine something like this playing as someone is exploring an old abandoned house and stumbles across an ancient box with something devastating inside.

I'd like to expand upon it, ideally laying down some drums, and strings/electric guitar where it picks up towards the end.

The Golden Snitch

Behold!

I made this snitch  in 2007 as a gift for a friend before you could just buy one at the store. I placed it in a box that I covered in paper and ink to make it look a tad more regal. On one side there are swirling engravings and on the other side is a very poorly translated inscription reading "We'll lead as two kings" in Latin, although it more than likely says something like "Us reigning as how king twins."

The snitch was made with oven bake clay packed around a wooden core, and metallic origami paper over jeweler's wire for the wings. I carved a small compartment inside the wooden core to house secret messages, jewels, drugs, teeth, monkey tears, demon souls, etc. The etchings in the surface were made after a pre-bake (a half cook time to stiffen the clay without fully setting it) in order to avoid warping on the surface. Pre-bakes are great if you ever need to carve a design into a sculpture or you want to make straight cuts that will hold their shape, particularly if you're going for a hewn stone look. The swirling lines and the inscription we stained with a brown ink wash: coating the piece in watered-down ink/paint that seeps into recesses and then wiping off the excess on the surface.

It doesn't fly, but it looks pretty sweet.