Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

As some of you may recall, ages ago I made a wooden doorbell enclosure because our studio’s bell button does not have a cover and looks like the sort of thing that might electrocute a delivery dude. Well, I lollygagged on installing it and it sat in a box by the front door for many months and was eventually lost so it was never installed. So over the last couple of days I made a new one by sculpting it in clay and then making a nice two part mold out of silicone, and casting it in hard plastic and then painting it. In hindsight I am thinking I might have been better off just leaving it in plain plastic (maybe with the skull lighting up) but it’s easy enough to cast another one if I want to change it — and if anyone is really desperate for one, they cost me cents to make and I’m happy to make more.

You push the skull if it’s not obvious! I know that I went a little overboard with the hot glue to hold it in place but Caitlin thinks it’s going to get stolen, plus it was really cold out so I didn’t feel like cleaning up my work. I’ll do that another day. Honest, I will.

Now here are a few photos of the construction stages (Nefarious helped me make the mold boxes out of Lego — we’re going to try replicating a doll she made in foam later tonight, which I’m quite eagerly looking forward to as I’ve never cast expanding foam before. And, yes I made a mess with my new materials. As you can see I can now cast coloured plastic and do effects like the silver plating (which was done by brushing silver powder into the mold so it bonds to the outer layer of the plastic. The table cleaned off fine, but my fingers are ridiculously stained. Quality-wise I’m quite proud of this mold.

I sure sure sure do like making stuff… Even though I’m trudging through this bitterly cold storm of life in agony, following nothing but my icy breath in front of me to god knows what precipice, even in amid that meaningless horror somehow I still do like making stuff and it brings me a certain peace. I suppose they have an arts and crafts cupboard at the hospital for a reason, right?

Anyway, here’s an update on the nail “painting”. I pounded a couple thousand more nails today. I’m not sure how much I will get done tomorrow because I’m spending much of the day at the hospital but I’m sure the project, at least the portrait, will be done by the end of the week and then I’ll build a frame — I’m thinking 4x4s clad in steel — on the weekend.

Since I was asked, yes, the signature is done with wire wrapped around nails. I already have another few nail projects bubbling in my rusty skull but they’re so time consuming — to say nothing of loud — that I’m not sure it makes sense to bite off another one.

P.S. Tomorrow Nefarious is supposed to go downhill skiing with her camp, but the trip may be canceled due to snow. Oh the irony.

Some surprisingly age-inappropriate, in a good way, comments from the last couple days.

Shannon: So, would you say that I’m the best dad around?
Nefarious: There is a much better version of you elsewhere in the multiverse.

Shannon: Is Justin Bieber the most famous person you can think of?
Nefarious: He’s not famous at all. He’s no Bob Marley!

Oh why am I still up this late? I have to get up early to go to the hospital and staying up past my bedtime to Photoshop-doodle pictures of some Tuff Gong multiverse should not be so high on my list of realities to realize… Nefarious is quite fond of the multiverse right now because we’ve been talking about the nature of reality and seems quite enamored with the idea that all things are not only possible, but present. As to our Jamaican friend, that’s something she got into after exploring my record collection on her Mp3 player.

Well, I’m not sure what the upper limit actually is, but it’s a lot. If every “pixel” was filled in, then it would be 22,500, but much of the canvas is without nails. I’m doing it on 3/4″ plywood, and I have this terrible paranoia that it’s going to self destruct as I’m 90% finished threading it and have a muscley swollen right Popeye arm. My general procedure is to mark out a little 5×5 grid of dots using a white-out pen and then I use marker to “label” what kind of nail each will be, selecting from a brass screw, a dark metal nail, or the same thing but rusty, a light galvanized nail, or a copper roofing nail. Then I pound guide holes for the screws, and then nail everything in from shortest to longest and then add the screws. In addition to a couple hammers I have a few nail holders (regular tweezers, and some DIY clamps I made for the purpose out of plastic and foam) and a screwdriver with the head cut off for pounding nails that are below the average landscape height, and also for slightly shifting the position of nails.

This is how far I’ve gotten as of this evening:

The whole thing is 48″ square, so four feet by four feet. I really may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I am trying to fill in absolutely every single moment of my life with something. The second I sit down and am not really focused on something else I descend into the abyss of pain that this damned disease keeps me in. To be honest, even blogging or watching television or any cerebral activity can often not be enough to keep my mind off the hellish agony. So I’ve got a lot of projects on the go. Obviously I can’t pound nails at night (my neighbor Chriznik of Effigy was really cool with me when I moved in and moved his band’s jam space to be considerate of me, so I feel horribly guilty about the wall-penetrating noise already, to say nothing of annoying Caitlin) so tonight I’m going to work on a stuffed animal project — I’m making safety eyes and so on out of plastic resin and this is the test project.

Oh and I also made a ruler that’s got 5/16″ spacing that’s in the picture above, but if I do this again, and I am not sure I would because of how long it takes unless I took on a $$$-generous commission, I have already thought up quite a few things that would streamline the process of creation significantly. Finally, if it’s not obvious from the picture what all those nails are supposed to represent, here it is in context:

I just realized this may be my first true self-portrait since high school, although I guess the paintings that I made for Caitlin for Christmas sort of count, but it’s not the same thing. I’d say this is a self-portrait in the focused, dedicated, formal and traditional sense of the word.

I have so much that I am mad about and want to write about — nothing personal, don’t worry, just more about politics and healthcare and space travel and all the myriad other things that bubble out of my tormented mind — and it seems hard for me to maintain focus on writing without getting worked up, but I think I’m going to leave that for another time because it always ends up taking so much longer than I realize at the time, and I get into pounding away at this keyboard and suddenly I realize that two hours have gone past that I could have spent doing so much more useful things. So see ya later alligator.

Oh yeah — tonight I’m going to start reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s Gifts to Nefarious which I’m hoping will be good. We just finished Which Witch? by Eva Ibbotson, which on one hand was a fun and light read, but on the other hand was bizarrely peppered with homophobia and racism, enough that I felt I should post a warning review to Amazon about it, because to my surprise, even though there are a great many reviews of the book in various prints, not a single reviewer has mentioned this.

Should I be upset? I found it odd to say the least.