Table of Weird Clay Objects, Part 2

As promised, here is the other side of the Table of WCO. Note the IG-88 assassin droid mold towards the left/top side. I'm presently working on a menorah with IG-88s on each column.

Tribute to the Eldritch Hutch

I tend to personify inanimate objects. Letting go of some pieces of furniture feels like permanently saying goodbye to family. This large object was given to me when I moved into my first apartment in Piscataway, NJ. I used it as a bookcase for years, and later to display clay sculpture. A few days ago, I placed it on craigslist and within hours it was magically gone forever from my life.

Three Cthulhoid Objects

Yithian

In David Cronenberg's film Scanners, a seemingly schizophrenic homeless man turns out to have a variety of mental powers. He is eventually introduced to a whole community of people with similar powers. One of them is a sculptor who lives inside a giant sculpture of his own head. I feel like I've been living inside my own nervous system. I'm leaving this particular model of my mind, which manifests in the world as an isolated trailer in the wild lands west of the city of Tucson. I'm not sure if that counts as a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card for escaping the prison of myself, but it's at least a good excuse to change in some capacity.

This is a Yithian, also known as the Great Race, from "The Shadow Out of Time" by H.P. Lovecraft. The Great Race of Yith exists in earth's distant past. They are highly evolved, scholarly beings which maintain an epic library under what is now the Great Sandy Desert of Australia. They are eventually wiped out by a more aggressive alien invader, but are able to foresee this tragedy in time to transport their consciousnesses to the bodies of the great beetle-like creatures which dominate earth long after the extinction of Home sapiens. It was an early sculpture I attempted in 2004 and unfortunately fell apart before I had the chance to bisque fire it.

Table of Weird Clay Objects, Part 1

My kitchen island covered with all of the recent fragments and mold experiments. I would apologize for the obnoxious orientation but Google Analytics tells me I've had exactly zero visitors in the last month so fuck you, just turn the monitor on its side or laterally flex your fucking neck.

On a friendlier note, allow me to take you on a tour of Part 1 of the Table of Weird Clay Objects. The two stars on the left (that is, top) side were made as end-of-year gifts for my 2004-2005 third grade students. It didn't occur to me at the time how easily they could be used as weapons, but, FUCK YOU parents of my 2004-2005 students. It's much too late to sue me now. The two leftover stars were for Giselle, an artistic genius whose family moved back to Mexico weeks before the end of the school year, and Kassandra, a BAD GIRL who was banned from the end-of-year party and didn't show up the last day.

Then there are some creepy Barbie molds, my centipede swastika plaque, some Zombi Jesus Love pieces, assorted stars and bugs, and a series of experiments using the facial features of two male dolls used at the studio for serious figure study combined with various science fiction fragments.

Check back soon for the Other Side of the Table.

Joint of Mutton

This is another Lewis Carroll-themed sculpture depicting a character from the second Alice book that rarely gets the recognition it deserves in popular movies. The Tweedles made it into both Disney adaptations and the talking flowers at least made it into the 1951 cartoon, but the Joint of Mutton is invariably snubbed. The second book is modeled on a game of chess and after being insulted and confused by the two chess queens on her journey across the board, Alice becomes a queen herself when she makes it to the other side. She is given a banquet with the other queens, at which each course of the meal gets up and is introduced to Alice. Unfortunately, Alice is informed by her colleagues that eating food once one has been introduced to it is bad manners and each course is taken away before it can be eaten. Alice eventually uses her new queenly authority to demand that the food be brought back, but this only causes a bizarre explosion of chaos and Alice's hasty exit from her dreamworld.

Here is my first version of the Joint of Mutton, bowing politely so as not to be eaten. Part of its foot was blown off in the kiln so it doesn't stand very well. I made another one, but I gave it away as a gift and forgot to take a picture.

It's Better Than Bad; It's Good

More an excuse to play with the molds I made than any kind of creative outlet, I recently made these two log-like objects.

Observe if you will the sheer quantity of weird clay objects, soon to be relocated to a much smaller space.

What rolls down stairs
alone or in pairs,
and over your neighbor's dog?
What's great for a snack,
And fits on your back?
It's log, log, log

It's log, it's log,
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good.

Log from the Ren & Stimpy Show

Clay Objects I'm Leaving in the Desert

I'm leaving my desert home of seven years. It was my choice to leave but now that it's actually time to go, I can't imagine anywhere else ever feeling like home.

Here are some of the clay objects I'm leaving in the desert to be found by whoever buys the property from the bank or to disintegrate from exposure to the harsh elements.

This was an early sculpture of a megasquid that didn't turn out right, so I left it in a hole in the desert and let it get buried by years of flooding.

This is currently all that is left showing above ground.

This is the giraluna that I hurled at the wall when my car was broken into in October 2006.

This is a wiwaxia with a broken spine that was moved outside. I was hoping it might be stolen by disgruntled neighborhood teenagers, but apparently they have better taste than I thought.

This is an imitation Chinese dragon statue that I bought at the Columbus flea market in New Jersey.
It's missing a foot so I sculpted a substitute foot out of red modeling clay and used my dog Sheena's toenails for realism.

Sheena in all her squirrelly glory. Throughout her life she was plagued with a variety of canine skin diseases. After a few years in Arizona, the red clay foot contracted some skin diseases of its own and had to be thrown out.

Incan Helmet Head, Green Devil #2, White Gorilla

Mind Flayers and Mushmouth from Fat Albert.

Dan says:

The mushrooms look kinda like a combination between Mind Flayers and Mushmouth from Fat Albert.

I'm flattered to have created anything that could conceivably reminded anyone of mind flayers. I found the cast of Fat Albert much creepier than Illythids.

The Charles Crumb Twisted Cowboy Face

This cowboy face is based on a drawing by Charles Crumb, brother of cuddly-vicious cartoon artist R. Crumb. After seeing Terry Zwigoff's documentary about R. and his brothers, I had a brief frightening vision of myself living with my mother in my 40s, surrounded by sci-fi paperbacks in a cramped bedroom, having random arguments about whose turn it was to use the inflatable bath pillow. Thank Cthulhu that it didn't go down that way.

Charles Crumb's cowboy from an art aptitude test for a correspondence art school.

Corazón de hormigas

Hay insectos chiquitos arrastrándose sobre y a través de mi corazón.
Me pican a mí. Te pican a ti.

Older Shrooms

Skull Shroom

The Angry Mopheads

I wanted to write a children's book and illustrate it all with clay objects, digitally altered whenever necessary. It was about a kid named Jesús (Spanish hay-soos, not English jee-zuss) who has nightmares about an angry mop in his closet. The nightmares involve the furious mop chasing him down slippery corridors until he falls flat on his back, with the mop coming closer and closer to his upturned face. The last few pages would be without words, but would show Jesús waking up with the mop on his face, getting married with the mop on his face, having children with the mop on his face (and also on the faces of the children), and finally lying in a coffin, still with a mop on his face. I made the model of Jesús looking scared in bed, but I don't have a picture and it's not finished anyway. I made four models of the mopheads; my favorite is the one on the bottom right, even if it looks a little like one of those shaggy McDonalds mythos creatures from the 70s.

The Illuminati

The Rolling Stones Tongue and Lips Top Hat and Stash Box

During a studio event showing student and member work, a neighborhood man approached me to talk about the clay objects I had on display. These particular clay objects had some clay pipes among them and the man became very excited. He told me about a hat that his wife had made with the Rolling Stones lips and tongue logo emblazoned on it with red sequins. He wanted to commission me to make a clay version of it to serve as a stash box. He later brought his sister back with him to show her my pipes and other clay atrocities. She took me aside and apologized for her brother and thanked me for indulging him as he walked around the neighborhood drunk. I got as far as making a small clay version of the hat, but it was obvious that he wasn't coming back after a year or so and I was bored of the project by that time anyway.

Here is the original hat.

Here I am wearing the hat. I look so happy because I'm going to throw it out soon.

Eye of Fear and Flame

Beholders are aberrant D&D monsters consisting of a spherical body, various eye stalks, a glaring central eye, sharp teeth, and a lust for chaos. Eye of Flame and Eye Tyrant are subspecies of beholders. Eye of Fear and Flame was a fairly generic undead creature, but I think the name should have been assigned to another beholder subspecies.

These Weird Clay Objects don't look much like beholders, but they justify me writing about Dungeons & Dragons aberrations, which makes me feel like life is worth living.