Journal entry for August 21, 2001

Today's summary: Spider sculpture with blade legs, gold and acrylic abdomen.

I was out sick from work today... didn't sleep well at all last night, woke up with cramps. It's bad timing (when is it ever good timing?). I did get to catch up on sleep at least, and when I woke up, I felt a lot better.

So, after waking up, I finally got around to scanning that spider sculpture I've been mentioning since this weekend!

Click each for a larger view.

   

This sphere is acrylic, with a rough area of gold leaf on the underside. As a result it's very reflective, catches light really well at certain angles, like a cat's eye. There's some internal spalling (it looks dark in the picture, over on the right) which is actually kind of whitish/silvery. Inside you can see the "stem" of wires that I stabbed into the abdomen, red hot, to secure them inside... the plastic melted and then caught on fire at that spot, which just made my job easier. Bubbling plastic hardened around the wires, giving them a coat of shiny bubbles.

I really love that sphere's look, the construction process... and of course, all those pointy legs! Muahahhah! I always used to wonder how spiders could run around on their own legs... with THIS spider, the question is multiplied. Of course due to the blades, I don't know for sure how I'm going to attach this in a display case, but, that's secondary to what I was going for. I guess I'll sew the legs down using fishing line as previously described, only I'd be using the loops in the blade and/or the coil around each blade.