JJ Worden

I seem to be all over the place these days. Prolific, yes! But frittered.

I still have more herring tins to come but they seem to have migrated to the back of the pile.
I did finish this one, though. And it might be my fave to date.


This one includes two special elements.

1. A photo of my husband's grandmother (on the right) in front of the Peggy's Cove Lighthouse, an iconic symbol of Nova Scotia.
2. Plaster wings using Madrat Rubber's (is Gretchen still in business??) coolio wing stamps. If you look closely you'll notice the wing on the left actually broke. I love using broken then patched bits in my work. That whole Wabi-Sabi thing I guess.

And while I still have a few unfinished tins to work on ... and after a brief clothes-making interlude(like I said. prolific. FRITTERED!!)... I pulled out the wax.

On Instagram I saw this wonderful filtered photograph with cracks and texture of a simple monochromatic image and it set my brain cogs twirling. I've been wanting to play with some of my own photographs for awhile and the combination of cracks and softness just scream WAX! to me.

This is still very much a work in progress but I like where it's going.
One note though: Red is HARD. (ie it gets everywhere you don't want it!)

And of course, while I had the wax out I started to splodge it on all that pre-Christmas plastery goodness. Firstly I added legs (aka scrolled up wire) and fences (nail 'posts' wrapped with thin florist wire) to all the houses then I let loose with the wax.

I love love LOVE the combination of plaster and wax hence the reason  I signed up for Stephanie's class in fall Waxenplast. You should join me. It's gonna be goooood!

...  continue to pile up on the stairs (placed there to be taken up to the studio) and I'm creating shrines as fast as I can!

This one kinda got away from me ...


I'm gonna let it ride though. Because it's all about the process. Right?!? Actually it doesn't look quite so ..erm.. dark in the photo as it is in Real Life. But trust me it is. And very rough. My main bugbear is the 3 top bits which really felt awesome when I first attached them. (remember the wip? it kinda worked!) But then the bits fell off when I was doing other stuff and had to be reattached and it was messy and so I tried to make that part of the overall feel and well, then it  got REAL messy. Messed up and funky.

Live and Learn.
Let's move on shall we?

So I went C.L.E.A.N. on the next one...

Serendipity at work here. I'm a huge multitasker and was doing some plaster casting in between waiting for herring tin things to dry, had some leftover plaster and dumped it into one of the tins sitting on my table. The starting place for this one. I gouged into it. Then painted. I'm kinda loving it. The "wings" I've had forever. I bought a metric buttload from Lee Valley yonks ago and I'm down to my last few. The hanging focal was a test using some crackle product I got atop a photo wrapped with copper tape and soldered ... a dirt simple way of creating a faux bezel.

And then back to a bit more of an aged (busy?) look...

To me the sum of this one's parts totally make it a strong piece. Something about the whole eye in the triangle thing (aka Eye of Providence) maybe? Coincidence that I just finished reading Dan Brown's Lost Symbol (fyi. don't bother. it kinda sucked!)? Probably not. We are sponges, we artists. (and hence the reason we should be very very careful when getting cranky about copyright. but that's a whole other rant for another day!) Anyway. I like how this one turned out.

More to come... two are almost done.
 And still more tins on the stairs!

I'm currently in that crazy space of having a ton of projects going on at the same time.
I do think multiples actually benefit from this frenetic chaotic creative pace ...when finished the series has more of a cohesive tone. Maybe because similar elements or symbols or colours are used and reused.

During however can be a bit overwhelming.
And every time I go through this I think, "Geez! I should really have a spare horizontal space that I can use for drying or holding." heh. yah. right. "spare horizontal space". not happening any time soon.

One more herring tin shrine just about finished (waiting for glue to dry or it would've been added here) ... here are the ones in progress ... and I noticed another tin on the stairs ready for use. oy!

To recap ... artist friend Christi asked me to join the Spring challenge posted by Darcy Horn of The Jade Dog and I received my bag of mandatory goodies ...


Initially I thought I would make an assemblage but when I got out the sketchbook, this is what happened...



But first I had to get the polymer cab and those rudraksha beads to a more harmonious colour palette. I'm sure there is a rule NOT to alter the bead colour but hey! I'm an artist and if  something doesn't work I throw paint on it!


Lots of niggly bits. The skull needed something more solid so I fashioned a small bezel and filled with Diamond Glaze, plopping the skull on for good measure.

Drilling, wiring, figuring out crimping (my DD had all the beading tools and how-to books!). More drilling, gluing, a tooth here, a bone there and voila ...  I present "Delight Me! A necklace".