The idea of connecting pieces together that are different thicknesses has me thinking of creating a Baye Fall (info here and image here) series. The Baye Fall are a subsect the mourides, a Senegalese sect of islam. They are famous for, and most recognizable because of, their really cool patchwork cloths. Now I just need to figure out how I would connect all the pieces, and how I would paint and polish small pieces. Not sure how I'll do it but it will look real cool when I do.
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How about if you take the pieces and dye them before you glue them up, then polish and shellac. That way the individual pieces would have distinct colors. Have you been to see the Hugh Townley show at the Fleming? His work in wood is also amazing, though different from yours. He often just carved, but went through a period of coloring his work. See his website.
ReplyDeleteThe hard part isn't the painting, it is the polishing because of the rate the shellac dries (overlapping too quickly in the drying process results in removing shellac rather than adding it, somewhere around 20 to 30 seconds is needed to pass back over the same spot, with a small piece you can be going over the spot every 2 seconds). Also, if I dye the wood, I'll loose the effect of the painting and loose control over manipulating the color - the subtle colors are created by the many minute layers. There are a few possibilities to getting around this that I can play around with. One is to paint a larger piece and then cut it up, or I can line up a lot of smaller pieces and work with them all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI just heard about Hugh's show yesterday. I'll try and get over there to see it. It is great work, I saw his show at the Governor's office a couple of years ago. I've been thinking that it would also be great to profile other wood art on this blog so it would be a good place to start.
I'll bet there's a way to get subtle color in the wood without using shellac on the first pass. But I know you will find a way, you resourceful person!
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