My thought process for the piece is that there are parts of all of my ancestors in me, in my body, my dna. I long to know who I got my blonde hair from, my sense of humor, my tendancy to sunburn..all the little details that make me, me. However, there is really no way for me to ever know, since the sources of my identity (my ancestors) are dead. I see myself as being a mashed up conglomoration of all of my ancestors... a mix of indicipherable, unidentifiable parts. So, to represent the presence of my heritage within my physical body, I am casting myself out of the only physical remains of them left in the world...the dirt of their graves.
The actual casting process has been a long and hard one... finding a binder for the dirt, how to position myself for balance in the final product without making the postion imposible to take a mold off of, making a core, a frame, and a base etc.
However, the work is in progress and I have a couple of photos (displayed below) documenting the body casting process and the plaster mold into which the dirt will go.
First of all, body casting:
To do the casting of my head and neck, I obviously couldn't pull a plaster mold off my hair, so I made a wax replica.
Then put it all together...
More updates to come...
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