Plaster hand 

The main idea that guided this artwork was wanting to continue the space theme from the clay bird project. Other than that I kind of just experimented as I had never worked with plaster before and had to figure out how to work with it, paint it, and carve it. Working with the space theme I already had some ideas on what forms I could use from my research with the bird project. I settled on making two plaster hands, each one reaching up and out but one being more hesitant or grasping with the other one fully outstretched and reaching. This is how I tried to convey "reaching for the stars" through the 3D elements in this piece. I also carved into the piece as adding or subtracting from the original plaster form was one of the requirements, I carved stars and squiggly lines into the base I put the hands on with a clay scrape tool. The 2D-painted features on the hands were the most time-consuming part of this prosses, one hand has a star pattern meant to represent a supernova of some kind, the other hand is calmer. It is blue with different constellations on it that one can make out if you look for them. 

Making this piece was a new prosses for me as I have never worked with plaster before. My first attempt at making hands did not work as I did not get the water-to-mold powder ratio correct to make a mold of my hand, the substance was watery and chunky when it should have been dense and smooth. With my second attempt at making a hand, I used a much smaller container so I could have a better judgment of the consistency as I mixed it with a handheld industrial mixer. When it reached the right consistency I put my hand into it in the poss of the blue hand in the finished piece. The mold material quickly hardened into a tough jello-like substance, I slowly removed my hand from this mold before filling it with plaster. When the plaster had hardened the next day I took it home and excavated the plater hand by breaking off pieces of the jello-like mold with a butter knife and my hands. Unfortunately, a few of the figures fell off in the prosses but I was able to hot glue them back on. The next time I was in art class I decided I wanted to make a second hand because I thought the pose of the first was not interesting enough on its own. I repeated the prosses and got the outstretched hand from the final piece. I took the hands and a block of plaster that was made from the extra home to hot glue together. I first glued on the outstretched hand and then painted it, a process that took a very long time as it was hard to lay out the composition of painting a 2D star onto a complex 3D shape. After that, I painted the other hand blue and used a metallic marker to dot different constellations on it. I painted the base and carved the design into it using a clay tool. 

I started this project the day we made the plaster hand in class, therefore I came up with the "reaching out" theme spontaneously. However, I did at the time it was entirely white plaster and I still had to figure out what design and what to add or subtract from the piece. When we were told to make a sketch of our plan I decided to go with a space them going along with my last project, the clay bird sculpture, because it was still something I was interested in exploring further. In my speech, I had a moon and star hand. My original plan for adding or subtracting from the plaster was to carve creatures into the moon's hand, but this was before  I realized how fragile the plaster hand was. The next time I was in class after sketching out what to do with the hand I got the block of clay, I sketched out how I was going to carve it instead because it was a lot harder and would not break from adding designs into it. I structured the hands close together because your hand are close together if you reach them out as far as you can directly above you.