50... er, 4 Shades of Grey

So photos of the Whale.  This post will have them. 

The Whale as of 5 minutes ago

Today was amazing, I met up with Dory in NYC today.  She took me to the Garment District to find bead stores so that I could color match beads for the Whale project.  Now some of ya'll know that I have been working on this piece for almost a year now.  I started on November 13, 2011, and I took like 6-7 months off from the piece in order to complete some costumes for Otakon and Steampunk Worlds Fair.  Well I want to finish this piece ASAP.  One of the biggest challenges, besides the sheer amount of time it takes to sew down the beads, was that I was unable to find the correct shades of grey for the whale in the local bead shops.

E.L. James aint got nothin'
on my shades of grey 

  Ac Moore and Michaels craft stores have failed to offer more than one shade of grey, so I looked at specialty shops within a reasonable driving distance.  Well out of the four I looked up, only one was still in business, and they sold the grey tones I needed, but not in the quantities I needed to complete this piece.  The dimensions of this piece are 36x24 inches at least.  That's a whole lot of surface area to cover.  Sometimes I look at it and feel like I want to cry.  Now my brain (the one inside my head lol) is running ahead (lol) without me.  I've already prepped 3 more canvases in anticipation of continuing this series of work.  As I've been working on the Whale, I've been thinking about the deeper meanings in the project.  What makes this special to me, and the big question, why did I pick a whale when I've never seen one outside of an aquarium?  So this got me thinking about what the nature of what my art is, in regards to this subject matter.  Have I seen death?  And I came to the conclusion that, yes, I have seen death and it's almost a daily occurrence in the form of road kill.  I live in an area that's suburban, but it backs up onto wooded areas and some farmland.  Unfortunately people can't seem to figure out how to drive, so there's always dead deer, raccoons, squirrels and birds on the side of the road.  So I came to the conclusion that I should make art from what I see.  I see road kill every day, let's make art about it.  Not a terribly original concept, but this and trees are what I see everyday besides the inside of my house.  I looked into what happens to roadkill in NJ and found that most road kill is incinerated/ disposed of or left to rot on the side of the road.  It's not an honorable death and certainly not a pleasant one.  The exception for the rule is deer.  If the deer is freshly dead, there's a number of groups that are licensed to remove the carcass and if it's in good condition are allowed to give the meat to charities/ soup kitchens.  Of course health and safety rules are in place, but the flesh ends up not rotting on the side of the road and is put to good use, but only if someone reports it and it's hauled away within a certain time frame.  So now the art has become almost an effigy for the spirit of the dead animal.

On a lighter note, I'm learning the dainty art of tatting.  No I'm not tattooing people, tatting is a form of lace.

Look at my pretties

These are my samples. I'm very proud of them. This is not an easy process to learn, well, any lace process is not easy to learn. I haven't even begun to attempt bobbin lace, frankly it scares the bejebus out of me. I'm still learning techniques and it'll be a while before I'm making awesome stuff, like doilies.  My great grannies would be proud. 

That's about as much adventure as I can take for now,
See Ya'll Later
~Amy