Aardvark Art Glass

At last my octopus and jar issues are getting resolved. I hate having to play the supernatural card or the…I don’t know what you’d call it when say when you say it’s ok for a character to time-travel or be a vampire so they can do pretty much anything. An easy out? That’s what I call it. And that’s what I’m doing with the octopodes, pretty much.

You see, I need some back story to go along with these beads and also a explanation as to how the octopus keeps getting his tentacles on jars of stuff. I think I do anyway.The octopus, who’s name is Walter (until I think of a better one), I think he’s kind of hapless more so than misguided. (I haven’t fleshed out all the nonsense yet.) He doesn’t really know “time travel” but he does know (and like) “jar”. He also knows that if he walks through this under water worm hole thing in his closet there’s jars all over the place. So each time he goes through he grabs a jar from the other side and comes back, sometimes altering history, sometimes just getting a snack.

So far there are only two jars of historical significance ( thus requiring the time-travel explanation). One contains the subject of a very famous photograph by Andres Serrano (which never went missing though could have fit in a jar).  The other contains Kennedy’s brain, which is either missing or not depending on which website you read. I’m choosing to believe it is missing because it’s absence dovetails so nicely with the time traveling octopus explanation. Yep, that’s what I have so far. Some of them are up on Etsy now, if you want to see. Let me know if you think of any jar ideas.

Well, there you have it. We had our name the new year party on Friday. I have to say that it seems a lot more effective to have it on New Year’s Eve but we were in Nebraska on New Year’s and then we were sick and busy watching commercials about butter. Friday was the earliest possible opening. Lotsa folks over. Oh, and you guys, if you host a lot of parties you have to get a Breathalyzer. Drunk people love those. We got one for Christmas and it’s probably the best gift ever. Don’t announce that you have one- just pull it out and let people amuse themselves with it while they wait for a cab.  Otherwise it will become a contest. The world is drunk enough already without people to out do each other.

One miracle that’s supposed to happen soon is a new kitchen floor. On the 4th we’re going to the gem/mineral/bead shows in Tucson. While we’re away a friend is supposed to be re-linoleum-ing the kitchen. With a new floor on the way, Don gave the green light for people to draw on the old floor with sharpie markers. Fortunately, there were too many people in the kitchen for the idea to take hold in any significant way.

Meanwhile, on the bead front…I’m able to make jars of pickles now

but they keep cracking. Really mystifying and frustrating. The greatest success so far has been the Vampire Squid

He’s got a cape. He’s in desperate need of props,though. Someone at the party suggested that I drill out the hole on the front and turn him into a roach clip. And you know, that’s not the worst idea. There are definite lines between glass that stoners will enjoy and glass that is purchased by 40 year old ladies with good credit. The two aren’t mutually exclusive or anything but, I think these beads belong to the former.

Capes are not that hard. Just a practice bead. The mask bead with a squid on it is up in the Etsy. I cooked it again. I think it turned out pretty good.

There. The 24 hour butter commercial channel will never be forgotten. Check that off the list.

I am enjoying making octopodes on things.

That’s supposed to be a doughnut. (Thanks, Jen) I like the filled doughnut idea because it makes use of the bead hole. The bead hole looks conspicuous on a sandwich.

First try vampire squid (or maybe octopus) on face:

Can you tell I just kind of stopped? That was unexpectedly stressful. Sometimes it’s best to just get the creäture* on there and throw it back in the kiln. You can always re-heat.  And the time for cape practice is not when you’re building one on top of something involved.  I’m re-living that bead now. Shudder. More on that one later. I’m going to go stick an octopus on a ball of yarn. I made one yesterday out of stringer. That sounds like fun.

*Word Press spell check keeps wanting me to put an umlat over the “a” in creature. An umlat? WTF is up with that?

Continuing an ongoing exploration of both the amazing and goddamn aspects of the octopus, meet the horizontal eye. It’s too big but I would say it’s a vast improvement over the other ones. Beneath the octopus is a cheese sandwich. It’s the only base shape  that allows me to build a creature without a mandrel going through the head. In retrospect I probably should have made a pretty tab bead instead of a sandwich. But I like the food thing.

So yesterday morning I heard for the first time (as far as I know) Matt Taibbi’s quote about Goldman Sachs being a “vampire squid on the face of humanity”. Maybe I did hear it earlier but wasn’t all tuned into the squid thing so I didn’t see it as a potential cephalopod making opportunity. But I do now. I can make faces and vampire squids.  Normally, if you want to you want to vampirize something you can keep it its usual appearance as long as you throw a cape on it, but I know from watching “True Blood” that vampires don’t wear capes anymore. Since the cape thing no longer applies and squid mouths aren’t really visible, eye and skin color is all that distinguishes a vampire squid from a regular one. I guess it’s a good thing I’m making this when the public’s vampire interest is at it’s peak. Otherwise people might not get it. Another possible reason people might not get this: the quote is really old. Not much we can do about that. We’ll see how far we get with this one.

FYI: Vampire Squid photos. Vampire squids are real, but they’re not walking undead entities like on TV.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at my Etsy but I’ve been torching a lot. The octopus/jar project. I’m still loving the jar part–someone requested a jar of brains sans octopus today. So that’s encouraging-it’s 50% marketable, anyway. For a myriad of reasons the octopus part is a lot harder.

Here’s a picture of a real octopus opening a real jar. Mine is never going to look anything like this:

How could you not want to think about this all day? It’s interesting as hell. I wonder how many things they tried to make him work before they settled on the screw-top jar? And why?  What would happen if they put one of the octopuses’ offspring in one jar and a hundred-dollar bill in the other? Does he need to get a treat to open it or is just getting it open reward enough? (Please don’t answer these questions. Facts will only get in the way of the octopus project.)

More recent octopus news:

They gather coconut shells and make shelters out of them. This is quite remarkable but if they were really smart, like people, they’d sort them according to cup size and turn them into novelty brassieres. We’d probably elect them mayor then. And they would deserve it.

Here is my model octopus. It’s one of the Failed Legends ornaments. I don’t own any hatless octopi:

And here are some of my failed beads:

So far we have pickles, brains, potpourri, a pet fish and a clean urine sample. Maybe today will be the day.

We’re back from NE. At the reunion, I think we swept the “longest” category as it applies to “distance traveled” and also “beard”. I’d be remiss if I didn’t give the family props for drinking the Imperial IPA Don brought. It’s not a standing around and drinking for six hours beer.

So, mostly over the weekend we looked at family pictures, of which, if you count the slides, there were thousands. I’m not kidding. We must have looked at two thousand pictures. Really old ones. I love that stuff. We brought a bunch home so we could match them to names in Don’s family tree program. We’re also trying to archive paper photos in the most acid-free or paper-friendly way possible.

Beautiful? No kidding. This is a projected slide that I photographed with my digital camera. Fast way to archive and it worked a lot better than I thought it would. Some of them were kind of contrasty but some of them, like this one, were really nice. Neat, huh? I’d show you more but I have to get re-acquainted with my nonsense around here.