Friday, August 1, 2014

We Pretend We're Artists Sometimes: The Untamable Beast

Awhile back my boyfriend, Tyler, my roommate and I went to the beach. We had plans to just hang out on the sand, read, and take in the sunset. But before settling in, I wanted to dip my head in the ocean, get a little water on me. Well, a dip turned into about half an hour of playing in the waves. It was fantastic feeling the power of the ocean sweep me up and carry me to shore time after time.


Tyler and our roommate at the beach.
The truly fantastic part, however, was that this random, pretty normal trip to the beach inspired some artistry in Tyler. And then Tyler’s artistry inspired some artistry in me. 

When I returned to my beach chair after the ocean, Tyler had said that he had left me a couple of voice memos I should listen to. I found them, held the phone up to my ear and pressed play. Immediately I recognized the fact that these voice memos were poetry Tyler had “written” on the spot. And the poetry was about me. I was floored and flattered. No one had ever been inspired to create art about me before.

I wanted to paint something that could partner with his words. And I somehow wanted to display his words with the painting. I’ve always wanted to try the Pinterest mirror thing where you put stickers on a mirror, spray paint the mirror, then peel off the stickers so the mirror shows through where the stickers are. So I decided I would try that with this project. 

I started by painting. I gathered some reference photos (which is really easy to do on Pinterest. You just search what you're looking for then create a board to save them all) so I could visualize what I wanted to do and I spent a Saturday putting paint to canvas. Originally, the woman was going to be clothed, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that none of the clothes I would put on her felt right. So she ended up naked. It wasn’t anything too fancy when it was finished, but I was happy with the result:


The plethora of reference photos for this painting


The final painting
I then started working on the mirror. I wrote out Tyler’s spoken poem and, with his help, picked out a stanza that we both liked and thought would look good next to the painting.


My first mirror, all broken and stuff :(
I luckily found a mirror the exact same size as my canvas at the dollar store. How fortunate that I only had to spend $1 on this mirror! (Well, $2. I tried to take the frame off my first mirror and it broke into tiny pieces. I was much more careful taking the frame off my second mirror.) I bought letter stickers from Michael’s (two packs so I knew I had enough of each letter I needed…but now I have extra letter stickers up the wazoo, haha) and went to work.


The mirror once all the stickers were put on.

I measured each line to make sure everything was centered. I counted the number of letters in a line and made sure to put the letter half way down the amount of letters in a line right in the middle of the mirror. So for example: the mirror was 11x14in and I knew the middle of the mirror was 7in in. If I had 16 letters in a line, the 8th letter in the line would go 7in into the frame and I would put the other letters down around the middle letter. Does that make sense?

Anyway, this took a LONG time. Definitely a whole days work. And at the end of the sticking I was worried because some stickers weren’t holding to the mirror well. I knew that if they didn’t stick they wouldn’t prevent the spray paint from covering that area. So I put the mirror on the floor and put some heavy books on top of it in an attempt to get all the letters to stick well. I left the mirror that way for 24 hours. 

The mirror right after spray painting.
Then came the fun part! I took the mirror outside and started spray painting! I put about 3 to 4 coats on and left the mirror outside in the sun to dry for several hours. It was probably longer than it needed to be out there, I didn’t want to risk messing up the paint. 

The second hardest part was getting all the stickers off. I anxiously pulled the the first sticker off and to my surprise it came off cleanly AND succeeded in leaving beautiful crisp lines between where the sticker was and the spray paint. I was so happy that none of the paint seemed to run under the sticker! The rest of the letters were a little harder to get off. A LOT of the stickers were stubborn and wouldn’t come off just by peeling. I ended up using a combination of a pencil eraser, Q-Tip, and GooGone to get all the sticker residue off The GooGone worked great! It loosened the sticker adhesive without really affecting the spray paint!

After peeling off the first sticker. It looked so good!
Finally my mirror was done and it was wonderful! I couldn’t wait to hang it next to my painting! But here in lied another problem. When I took the frame off the mirror at the beginning of this project, I took with it any means of hanging. The back of the mirror was naked: no hooks, no holes, nothing. I didn’t want to use traditional mirror hangings because I knew this would scratch the spray paint. I tried to super glue a hook, and then some wire to the back of the mirror but the super glue was just not sticking to the mirror back.

I eventually ended up getting a frame of it and sticking it in that. It’s not ideal, but I wanted to get the project hung and done. I can always revisit it if I want to but I’m just happy it’s all finally up on my wall. It looks beautiful and I am so proud of the fact that it’s a combination of both Tyler and my artistic talents. I’m also happy that something I’ve always wanted to try from Pinterest worked out! 

The poetry and painting together at last!

Here’s the entirety of Tyler’s spoken poem from the beach:

Even through a moments hesitation
She walked down the sand wall
As a heroine, she stood in front of it
It roared at her
She jumped back a little
The sand sifted under her feet
She did not move
She immerses herself in it
With wooshes it rushes at her
She finds herself
Torn asunder
But revived
Rejuvenated

She resurfaces
Triumphantly
She feels as if she has tamed the beast
Even if for a moment
It congratulates her
With little taps on her legs
It pats her gently
As she victoriously leaves the darkness
And the lightness
The only place where blue can be white
Through friction
It is our ocean
Ending’s flubbed

As she walks away from the crashing waves
Victorious
She welcomes the full light of the sun
And decides to try and tame another untamable beast

Even though it made her weaker
More tired
She kept going because she knew it would make her stronger
Wiser
And be able to endure the harsh times that were ahead

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