artist statement:

this piece is another part of my heart investigation and is inspired by planets or more specifically Saturn.  Saturn is my favorite planet and also I want to see if I could recreate the floating rings which turned out to be difficult . The colors on the planet/heart itself are inspired by more a sunset color palette then a planet because I wanted the planet to resemble Saturn but also be a planet of my own creation. 

I started this piece by creating a triangle of aluminum foil.  Then I created a layer of clay around the triangle of aluminum.  Before I put the clay in the oven I poked holes on each side to anchor the ring of the planet. Once the heart came out of the oven I filled the holes with hot glue and stuck small metal wired piece into the holes. I then created the ring by wrapping a piece of wire around a circular object then removing and cuting it to size. Then to attach the ring to the small wire pieces I had to wrap white yarn around thee wire and small wire piece then put a thick layer of hot glue on to of that.  After that I created the structure to hold the heart and hung the heart up. I almost forgot to add the stars but I think they are a key componnent to the piece so I decided to bake littel clay stars and hand them with yarn. 

the most challenging part of this heart was attaching the ring and finding a way to attach the stars without breaking the heart. Also the heart itself breaking and me having to bake new ventricles and attach them with hot glue.  to attach the stars I created little circles of hot glue and let those dry then attach the string to the circle of glue and glue those to the structure which turned out to work better then I thought it would. then to attach the ring as I said before I had to add yarn which effected to design of the heart a little but the overall look of the piece came together how I wanted it too.