Clothes Pins, Plaster Dust, And Old Red Gloves

My favorite class this quarter is 3-D Approaches with Kevin Curry (if you're at DU I highly recommend his class). It's held in the sculpture studio, probably one of my favorite rooms in the School of Art and Art History. There is a plethora of sculptures, random objects, and masterful works of art.

I love just walking around and observing. After shooting my fork and boot (pictures in an earlier post) I spend a blissful half hour using my camera to see the rest of the room.

The current project I'm working on involves plaster, a lot of plaster. More importantly, plaster dust. After becoming severely dusted through the process of pouring plaster, I was privileged to become even more plastered while sanding my block of plaster! It has been quite the experience. Starting with a solid cube of plaster and the instructions to just carve is a bit daunting. It's like in a drawing or painting, the first stroke is the hardest. That reminds me of my my photograph, titled "The First Stroke's The Hardest" - below:

I finally began sanding, working off of the word 'free.' My finished result doesn't really embody this notion, but that doesn't matter. After hacking, chopping, hand-sanding, drilling, and hammering my block, I finally took it to the Dremel Tool. Engrossed in my work, I didn't realize what a mess sanding plaster creates. Both of us sanding were covered from head to toe in a fine white dust. It looked as though we had stepped outside right as a blizzard hit. There was a sort of pure beauty to the dust. It was so white, so clean, so untouched. Soft and light, it was innocent.

I don't have any professional photos of my finished result yet, but here are a few Photobooth pictures, and a lovely photo of my (taken by my professor) sanding: