2006.1 - GIRAFFE

This is another of my body parts pieces. It is designed so that the head and neck stand 34” above the floor of the catwalk-balcony in our house, and the legs and tail hang 36” from the top of the ceiling of our kitchen below. I designed it so that the legs and tail will hang over the kitchen counter so that no one will bang his head on them. The body of the giraffe is then suggested by the floor ceiling. The piece is actually life sized for a baby giraffe. Unfortunately, David doesn’t think that this would be a good architectural feature in our kitchen family room, and I need to keep peace in my home. But it would be pretty neat.

As I’ve said, I am uncomfortable making mammals. I don’t feel confident about my ability to make the heads and faces. But there is a kind of oddity that just seems to happen as I make them, and my hands almost magically make the forms without my consciously thinking. Perhaps it is because I had a horse as a pet when I was twelve, and I just remember how his face felt. It is reminiscent of a story my cello teacher, Michail Gelfandbein, told me about his first lesson with Mstislav Rostropovitch. He needed to play a note that was quite high on the fingerboard, one that is not played often or confidently by most cellists. When he hesitated, Mr. Rostopovich told him to hear the note in his head, and then just place his finger and play it. It is a strange process, but even I have been successful with it.

I had a lot of fun making this piece. I had help from both Mr. Wong, and a Peruvian man who had been a professional taxidermist before he came to the U.S. and became a member of our pottery class. Both men gave me valuable advice while I was making the head and neck, and the taxidermist shared photos from one of his professional publications that had photos of the details of giraffe parts. It’s the brilliant people that make a public studio like the one at Foothill College so wonderful to work in.

I was particularly pleased with myself for the idea that I came up with to apply the glaze. I wanted the patches of the giraffe’s skin to be unglazed, while the lines were crisply drawn and the glaze thickly applied. I used shelf contact paper to cover the areas I didn’t want glazed when I sprayed the piece. It worked perfectly.