More resin attempts and a little bit of hypomania

This has all the little dots of resin on my workbench embedded in it

Just to clarify, I'm not bi-polar. I know, because it was discussed as a possibility this year with my shrink. Why did it come up? Because I have a tendency to get a little teeny bit over excited at times....

I love creating stuff. It is my drug of choice. I had one of the those crushing moments when I was 17 when I realised I was going to have to do "other stuff" to make my living other than creating. I should have been well prepared, my mum staged quite a few preparatory crushing moments well before this time. I think she was telling me there was no way I was going to art school when I was still in primary school, and isn't writing fun, you could be a journalist....

I realise now that going to work and having to attend to a schedule other than the one I set for myself when making is probably a good thing, as I tend to get a little involved in my work...

Ideas are heady heady things. That... "whoah! I could...." moment is a rush that only depictions of drug addicts on tv seems to approximate. I used to love 70s drug poems for that reason. No Virginia, despite the psychedelic coloured furs and insane imagery, the Kuhl machine is run on a strictly no illicit substance regime. My brain is more than capable of producing thoughts and delusions scary enough when straight without adding psychoactive substances along with it. But that careening, thrilling, everything dropping away and only your crazy little mind powering away for all it's worth feeling seemed to be discussed ad nauseum by poets who all seemed to die very young (or get straight) when experimenting with various chemicals.

I've been up since before 5am this morning, playing with resin. I have no plans to kick Dinosaur Designs from their pedestal or conquer the world of resin jewellery in an extremely stinky wave of translucent and opaque colours. Whilst I'm gonna stick some stuff up on Etsy once it's add sanded and finished properly, that'd probably be the extent of my plans for the resin, that an a couple of local craft fairs. So why, might you ask, on my holidays, the week before I go back to school, coming off stress leave, why would I be driven to sand and pour and mix and cast and dremel until my arms ache and I've gone through three changes of clothes?

Dunno. I just wanna. I always wanna. When something's on my mind, I just connect with the idea and everything else seems to not matter. I had horrible eye strain for three days (sounds like nothing but suprisingly painful) because i was so transfixed by the whole GIMP and Flexify thing as something fun for the kids at school to do I spent hoooooouuuuurrrrss looking at it, hours past the point when my eyes were dry aching husks in my sockets. My physio tells me off for not taking breaks from whatever it is I'm doing and straining stuff. It's crazy.

But i suspect I'm not alone.

This post is not so much an indication of my own madness and more a call to arms. I think you're out there, little art geeks obsessing over some material, process, image or idea, ignoring the calls of your friends, families and bodies in pursuit of some unidentified goal. People always assume 1. that I have some huuuge money making scheme plannned for all this. Why else would I be making such an effort? 2. I'm obsessed and somehow making this stuff is assuaging some deep down problem. it's odd, that the pursuit of something, for itself, no big fame, fortune or goal in mind, just 'cos is seen to be pathological.

Matt's hands....to scale

Anyway, the fun that's been had of late, is to try to layer colours inside a mould. Seems to work with simple things, not so much with complex shapes as you will see in the pic of the sea anenome ring. I made a big green bangle from scratch. I have to as I had monster lobster claw hands (seriously, I'm 5'10 and my boyfriend's 6' and my hands are bigger than his. Though he does have freakish Cabbage Patch fingers....). All the pretty bangles I've made so far don't fit me. So...if you also are plagued by large hands in a catering for child's sized paws world, never fear, larger bangles (3" diameter and bigger) will be at hand...in my Etsy shop as soon as I get my shit together. So the pic of the bangle below is kind boring, but I made it completely from scratch, plasticene around a plastic bottle, cast, reshaped, sanded....and I'm not finished yet :(

I also have new pretty colours! Fluoro yellow, orange and green (the colour of the bangle) and some Pearlex coming. SO despite trying to phase gently back into going back to school, there could be a few more 5am mania days of production ahead....sigh...

Ahhh, Mike Dransfield. Lookin all dark and Jim Morrison-y like that on the front cover. If you'd given him a flannie, ridiculously tight jeans, and a Holden Statesman, I'd have so gone for him!

"alerted by some signal from the golden drug tapeworm that eats your flesh and drinks your peace; you reach for the needle and busy yourself preparing the utopia substance in a blackened spoon held in candle flame " Michael Dransfield, he died 7 days before I was born in 1973. I was completely set up by his and others like his work. I imagined stoners to be these elegant effete characters who spouted beautiful words of obscure wisdom whilst their pupils dilated exponentially. That was never going to happen in Darwin.

By the 80s, everyone I knew who took drugs were like me, working class. So it was more black Faberge stretch jeans and Metallica t-shirts than musings about esoterica. It was kicking someone's puppy to death because it ripped up someone's dope plant and watching someone's Dad vomit on the table and not move because he was so wasted. People who shot up weren't quite so full of lassitude. Even if you're too fucked up to get up, there was always still that nasty, furtive anger that just seemed to bubble away. It's weird, it's like Kath and Kim getting fucked up, just as noicely banal and surburban but never quite so funny.... And just in case you want proof, here's a lovely pic of 17 year old Serena with streaked AND permed hair. Dear god.....