Post for January 21:

Last weekend and this past week was spent making nests out of a "weight gain" (supplement) labels and powder. Like I mentioned in my last post, after experimenting with the labels, I thought using the actual powder as a medium could be interesting too. I mixed the powder with just a bit of water, liquitex gel medium, and Elmer's glue. This produced a nice, but very sticky, paste that I was able to work with you form shapes out of. I found that layering the paste worked best to build up the structures. However, this meant I had to wait a few hours for the paste to start hardening before I could add the next layer. But this waiting gave me a chance to make multiple nest forms with the medium. I just kept switching from nest to nest as it was ready for the next layer. I tested different amounts of water and glue that I was adding, and even tried adding yest, but that didn't really do much. I found that although the paste hardened nicely, it was hard to make some of the forms that domed upwards. For this, I used tinfoil, plastic wrap, or other materials to prop up the paste until it hardened. I also tried baking one to speed up the drying process, which worked... but it now relates too much to food and has kind of a golden brown tone to it. I like the forms the best when they dry out on their own.

Overall, I am very happy with how the nests turned out. Most are finished, however, there were two that got quit messed up from a roommates coming home late at night... so I'll have to fix or remake those two. The total time all of this took was about 7 hours, or at least I know I spent all Saturday working on them.

Tuesday I went back to the label nest and completely took it apart and started over again (3 hours). I made an inside structure, then spray glued it and started covering it with the biggest labels. The spray glue wasn't holding as well as I had hoped and was just overall very messy. I even tried sewing some of the labels on, which worked for the big ones, but then I noticed it would start messing too much with the form where the string would pull against it. So I stuck with the spray glue but used it sparingly and super glue. It looks like a nest..... but like a hand-crafted nest. It is not messy enough for my liking and looks too arts-and-craftsy. I think the problem is that the labels are so big that they aren't giving me enough room to shape the nest like I had imagined.

I need the paper/plastic pieces to be longer and skinnier... however, then I have to give up on the legibility of the labels. But I think that I am okay with that. A friend who I spoke with about the piece mentioned that I need to demonstrate "readability," but not necessarily "legibility." So I think I will try again once more for this type of nest, but use strictly nutrition facts only of the food products I eat and shred them very skinny. Thursday morning I spent about 3 hours browsing the internet on bird nests, construction, and sculpture, and came across this artist, Fiona Hall, who made various bird's nests out of shredded dollar bills... exactly how I pictured mine to look!

Anyways, I want to remake that piece this weekend, and then continue on ward to hopefully find materials to reconstruct my sheets nest and then I have been itching to make one out of tea bags and one out of pins with pulled cotton.