Friday I had to go to my friend Mandi’s 30th birthday party so was not able to do much on anything. I did work with Jerry some to fix the last offending post on the blog and this seems to have fixed the category problem (at least on most monitors that have a normal ratio – want more than this talk to the Professor). I am sure that Jerry thought he was actually finished with me but I have a surprise for him (he he). Now I want to figure out how to make the portfolios better and I still need to learn Flash:) I can find stuff like this to do FOREVER:)
On another note, The Professor says that I need to spell check all the posts since they are in the public and others may be reading. No one is but I guess I understand. My concern? I don’t want to keep going back to posts, cause I already have to do a lot of backtracking just to get caught up and I don’t want to turn this into a painful ordeal. I also don’t want this to start keeping me from making art.
Jerry offered to go through them for me and let me get back to creating but I am not sure how I feel about this. Seems like a lot of thankless work for him. What I have started to do is write the posts in Dreamweaver and spell check them there (that would be starting with today). The rest will still have to be done. Why? Because the Professor says so…
AND By the way the WordPress What You See is What You Get Interface is full of CRAP! … You have to go back into crooked code view to find out that it likes to add div tags and leave out paragraphs.
However, let me get back to to Friday:
I was miraculously on time getting home from work to leave for the party. This is very unusual for me as I am always late for everything, but not wanting to have trouble on the home front I really tried to pay attention to the time. Little did I know that Friday night was not going to end until 6am Saturday morning. If I had known this I would have been late and missed the whole dam thing. I am still not sure how in the hell it happened. The party was great and over by 11ish.
Here’s what I do know. After 11Christopher asked me if we could go to Amy and John’s house and hang out. I thought, its close to home, we haven’t hung out with them in a few years, and overall a harmless trip. Sure.
I was wrong, very wrong. Long and short Amy had stuff to talk about (that can not be discussed here) and after numerous mixed drinks (we were still drinking them at 6am) we just had to go home. This completely wrecked Saturday as I did not recover or get up until 4pm. Upon waking Christopher told me he wanted to go to Mt. Pleasant and 1) go by the guitar store to pick up his guitar, 2) look at Whole Foods for organic food and 3) drop off a CD to Kevin.
I thought OK, it will only take a couple of hours and it’ll help my hangover. Plus I could go to the bead store for a couple of things I needed. Why do I think.
We wound up having dinner with Kevin and Bern and that was very nice but by the time we had dinner and went to Whole foods it was midnight. I did find out a couple of places to get heads for the Hair Photography project so that was good too.
When we finally got home Chris and I sat on the couch to watch a movie and he promptly fell asleep. I decided that this would be a good opportunity to do some back tracking on the Lady Madonna sculpture since I am planning on working on it tomorrow. So here goes.
Lady Madonna was first conceptualized in March 2006. I drew the original drawing in the car while we were on our way to Conway, South Carolina to get Christopher’s banjo repaired. Here are the original sketches.
I did a lot of work with Christopher’s help in March and April on this piece. Then it kind of went on hold between life, the website blog project and the institution. The Cello Body was drawn using my Cello. It was cut with a jigsaw out of oak. This was the first time I had used a jigsaw so this was interesting. The f-holes were also cut using a jigsaw but I had to go to Christopher’s dads house to use his because ours could not do a good job.
Cello Back and Front before f holes
Lady Madonna’s Head is a plaster cast of a Hair Dresser Mannequin. I used clear silicone to make a rubber mold of the mannequin head and then poured the plaster head. I still need to coat it with boiled Linseed Oil to make it more durable. Since plaster can easily break and chip I decided to use copper tubing to insert the stained glass hair into. This will also allow me to remove the hair since it will be made out of glass microscope slides. 
The Original Head
Silicone Mold with Plaster Mother Mold
Lady Madonna’s Head
The next thing to do was to figure out how to make the fingerboard. I also wanted to use real Cello strings and a real bridge in the hopes that once the piece is complete I can actually get it to play (something …I am not guaranteeing actual music). I was able to purchase used strings and bridge in Conway. We were able to use the belt sander at Christopher’s work to make the fingerboard. The tail piece that will be used to hold in the bridge, etc is made out of oak and a bolt. 
The Fingerboard
The Tailpiece
Cello Front (Minus F-Holes) Fingerboard and Tailpiece
Originally I had planned to have a steel base but this did not work out as well as I had hoped. I spent a 6 hour evening in the welding shop but just could not seem to manufacture the type of base that I wanted. I was able to use the forge to bend the front pipe how I needed and to cut down the back pipe. The pipes are going to be used to connect the Cello front and back and the head. The hope is that it can all be taken apart if needed. I am really running out of room at the house and my have to look at getting a storage unit for some of the pieces. It would be best if we can crate them so they can be shipped if needed. I wound up going with a wood base that I may have to drill additional holes in the bottom and add weights to. We will see.
The First Try at the Base
First Base with Poles Attached
The Second Base, Drying and Before Cut Oval
