I have to make trip to the hardware store today and find sheets of metal and pick out coils of wire to do my first welding project. Welding is pretty fun from the demos we've done - all the tools have massive warning labels, so you try to do the coolest project you can so it's worth the risk.

We have this tool call a plasma gun, which can produce a beam of particles that's like concentrating lightning into a power source- think "blade of fire". It cuts the metal by instantly turning it to liquid wherever you point the fine tip. You should only see the giddy delight in the eyes of my professor as he teaches us how to use these terribly macho tools.

I snuck into the studio this morning to get some photos of what I'm working with lately - but I only got photos of clay sculpture from last semester, and most of it is in a storage locker and fragile etc. But for the sake of the internet, I did my best.

Left: A (hollow) bat . I made an original, then made a mold of it, and poured it full of liquid clay....and I can make multiples! My professor proposed the idea of making a hundred of so of the bats, to hang upside down from a ceiling, making a "bat cave". Not sure if I'm that committed to installation art, but it's a really interesting idea.

Right: Another bat from the same mold, but the assignment was to alter the surface quality to emphasize detail...so I used the innovative technique of fine sparkly powder (known as "eyeshadow"). It turned out quite creepy looking. Never be afraid to be creative.

Below: Life-size "Bust" of my head. This was our final - and hardest - project, and one of the most disconcerting things I've ever done. But I learned SO much from struggling through it. It's resting and drying slowly (takes months because drying fast = bad cracks) which is why it's surrounded by other disembodied heads of my classmates.


Below: And in case you haven't noticed my dry (often dark) sense of humor, I opened my storage locker and noticed how the model of my hand I did was emerging from the scrap plaster castings - and had to take a picture.


(I actually do have a pinkie finger in real life - but in this version of me, it broke off.)