Paper Sculpture / Project Runaway

Chloe started her last quarter of high school a couple of weeks ago. While she could be getting out of school early every day, she instead chose to take advantage of pursuing more art electives. Her first assignment in Sculpture II (Bethany Jansen) was to create a costume constructed out of paper. This dress is what she created, and the following photos document the process from sketch to wear. She painted every drop of color and she sewed nearly every stitch (needed Grammy's help with the bottom of the zipper) (yes, there is a zipper and she received special permission to use it even though it is not paper).

The sketch that started it all. I'm sure glad she dreams big.

You can imagine how excited I was when she told me she wanted to marble. This was the first trough. The second trough had to be 54" X 42" to cover the panels large enough for the outer skirt. (Yes, that's larger than any trough I've ever built.) It was her brilliant idea to add the gold leaf.

I will never get over the glint of floating, spreading paint. This is directly on the substrate, before I helped her lay the paper down to "print"

Our feet. You can tell which one of us was the painter. Marbling is messy, gooey business.

Both cars had to be outside and we had to use the garage door to dry the panels. Of course there was severe weather both nights, so twice we packed it all up at the last minute to get the cars in from the hail. Chloe and Cody both got hailed on on separate nights. Kansas!

After the sheets dried, they had to be crinkled for "give". She even had a method for this so the paper would not get torn. We watched a lot of Netflix that night while we were waiting for the tornado to blow over.

Mock up on plain paper to make sure it would fit. All of the paper is butcher paper given to her by her art teacher.

Sewing the mock-up

Her Zamma and Grammy came two days to help piece and oversee her sewing. These two have always been suckers for their oldest granddaughter. (She has kept them sewing and doing all kinds of projects nearly all 18 years.)

This is how far they got day one. They worked from 10 am to at least 6 pm.

In the middle of all this she got so fired up that she decided to sew herself a fringy kimono, too. For several days there was no where to sit and eat. I finally put a moratorium on any side projects.

...and then there was the little matter of jewelry. She cast a mold of old gemstones and beads, ground up paper pulp in the school's blender, poured and dried the stuff into these perfect cabochons and half-pearls (they are glued back to back). The final step was painting them. You can see she had to try every shade of blue in my studio before she found the right one.

She ended up adding pearls and shortening the earrings to make room for her "ruff".

Here she is getting into the underskirt. Everything went on overhead. I thought she looked like the leg-lamp.

The catwalk from the third floor of McKnight. (How could Cody and I ever have guessed when we were in that building for photography/painting twenty years ago that we would one day be there to see our girl parade around in a paper dress?)

Catwalk rehearsal.

The fan ended up being a Friday afternoon project. I snapped this photo because it was the first time everything was on at the same time. What fun to see!

 

Needless to say, I was very proud to watch her wear it last night at WSU's Project Runaway, a benefit for ShiftSpace Gallery. She won first place in the high school category, $50 cash and a gnarly yellow assemblage trophy topped with little green army men and a "fly gun" loaded with hundreds of dead flies. If you click on the "watch her wear it" link you will see photos of all of the great costumes and fun!