Lac bugs and rump shakin'

If I had to choose one word to use to describe this week, it would be awesome.

Awesome as defined: used as a general term of enthusiastic approval (slang)

We started this week with a new instructor, Adam. We will only have him for 2 weeks, roughly, then on to another instructor. It turns out that Jerry was the longest we’ll have one instructor for. They’ll apparently be rotating in many over the remaining 17 or so weeks depending on the projects we’re working on. Which, for me, was great news. I value above most things: variety... so having multiple opinions and insights from various professionals is what I’m excited about. Its keeping me on my toes!
Now this guy…. He’s at the top of my list of favorites BECAUSE he plays music I enjoy during class. You name it, I liked it. Bjork, Beck, Beatles, Alison Krauss, Led Zepplin, Prodigy, some assorted ambient techno-y stuff, Imogene Heap, and consequently Frou Frou, Sia and so on and so on. Here is where I insert my opinion on productivity and the general social atmosphere due to good music. Music changes people. This week was awesome in that regard. Everyone up until this week was so focused on learning the basics, concentrating on mastering technique and being very self-involved. The difference this week and I credit the good music for this is that everyone was STILL doing all of that, we were just interacting with each other more. The people that never talk to us, talked. The people that isolate themselves weekly, opened up, searched out solutions from other classmates, stayed on campus during lunch, joined in friendly debates over tools and techniques. Adam roamed the class all day doling out advice and offering pointers. We all swapped music tastes, emails, phone numbers. Awesome. It was relatively ground breaking, and I credit music for assisting in that breakthrough. Its universal isn’t it? It evokes emotion, generates good vibes. I remember the studio at NIU being very drab and bleak to hang out in sometimes, but when my friends sending tiny shout out to kristy for her heavy rotation of rad music and dan for turning me on to beth orton! holla! plopped in a CD and fired up the coffee pot, the mood changed. Much the same here, just no coffee pot. $%#@%$

Mid week we got a guy named Steve for one project, Mrs. Iggys Earring Jackets. Before I continue on, I would like to just toss it out there that I have no problem with earring jackets as a whole, just these particular jackets. The idea with these was to take two sheets of metal (silver), cut out 2 bottom pieces, 2 top, precision file them, fit them together and solder. The deal with the project lies in the actual finishing of it. See, the idea here is to create these sort of organic looking, three dimensional flowy sort of jackets out of flat, uninteresting metal. So the challenge was to use assorted gravers to carve, carve I say, the metal into these interestingly curvy things. At the base of each curve it had to be 50% removal of metal and graduated up to the original height. Luckily we only had to carve one section, the rest we could use files on, but ddddaaaaaaaannnnnggggit, it was hard. You can do all of this well, carving and whatnot, but the FINISHING of this piece was impossible. Or it felt that way. I decided that they designed this project to specifically set us up for failure. doesn’t matter how good you are, the things going to be weird looking when you get done. and by wierd i mean something juuuuuuust doesnt look right. lopsided. it does not mat-ter how nice you carve it, when you pumice or polish it, it will reveal tiny scratches, bumps, uneven surfaces and unsavory dings. There’s this undercut on these jackets that’s nearly impossible and downright inhumane to try and sand, so I whooped out the pin vice and tossed in a tiny sewing needle to get in there and burnish, and what happens? I slip, and the tinytinytiny needle makes a nice tinytinytiny groove on the front of the jackets. What to do? Step backwards my friends. Resand. Burnish more. Create a more unnatural surface (more organic and flowing I say) complete with more waves, bumps and aforementioned uneven surfaces. Vicious cycle! Fuck up, re-do, get to the point you’re alllllmost done, fuck up, repeat as necessary. swear.
I did get them done though. And I’ve said this before, sometimes good enough is good enough. I’m glad that Mrs. Iggy doesn’t exist, and if she DID and I had to make these, I’d cast them and eliminate the crying and panic my entire class experienced with these things.

If you’re wondering how you hold a small piece of metal to carve it (I know you were), you use what’s called a shellac stick. Which explained simply is a chunk of stick with some hard plastic-y type goop on top that you can heat up and sink your tiny piece into, which when cooled, hardens to create a stable surface to work on.

Now.

Shellac. I know what the stuff is generally. Its hard plastic-y stuff, right? Right. Welllll, Orange (in our case) flake shellac, as defined by our midweek instructor Steve, is basically bug poop. Poop! You heard me. I had no idea. None. I did do some research and by research i mean i googled shellac and read like one or two articles becasue my attention span spans three and a half minutes MAX and its a secretion (poo) of the Lac bug. looks like a beetle. If y'all care to google it, do so. i've been side-eyeballing the varnish finish on all of my furniture since i read about it. BACK TO SHELLAC: So, gentle reader, we sink your precious tiny things into poo. Ok ok ok, so its mixed with other stuff I imagine, but its still what it is. But its totally safe and makes a hell of a piece holder. I cant tell you how many poop jokes we had going around the class, but there were many. Poop sticks, shit sticks etc. poking each other in the back of the head with them. What is it about the idea of a stick with what amounts to beetle dung on it that turns and entire class full of adults into five year olds that giggle at the mention of the word?


me and charlie with poop sticks

Back to Mrs. Iggy…. She took me a total of 9 hours and 5 minutes to fabricate. I think that trumps the flat pierced earrings we did last week that took me about 7 hours of work to do. As a matter of fact, that beats Mrs. Whatsherface’s thingy I made one of the last couple weeks. What a blur. I don’t even know what project we’re on anymore, but last time I looked, which was last week some time we’d passed project # 18 or something. So I imagine we’re on #20, give or take a piece or two.
Anyway, this weeks been great! The mood has shifted this week into something far more unified then it has been prior. Maybe its just my perception of what’s happening, but I don’t think you can fake that kind of good vibe with any group of people. I also think that it helped when we all figured out that we’re a third of the way through the program, and while 6 months seems long to some, to us it’s the most accelerated amazingly slow sobering liberating six months of our lives and we’re inhaling every moment.

Onward to week 9!
Until next week my friends, be well.