Brent and I cleaned the studio a little today! Woo! \o/ We put the Legend of En mural above the steps leading up to the studio, and we filed a lot of last year’s artwork away so we can make room for the new stuff we make this year.
Also, I found one of the big pieces of paper that we used to brain storm the Legend of En WAAAAAAAY back when we first decided to start working on the project … it’s awesome to see the ideas we had running through our heads at the time Here’s an exerpt of the ideas we didn’t use:
Characters (good/evil/neutral)
Baron von snuggles (good)
Large-breasted Princess (evil)
Fortune-telling beluga whale (neutral)
Asthmatic Cheetah (neutral)
Settings
Cherry Forest
Gnome’s Workshop
The Sighing Forest
The Edge of the World
Magical Items
Enchanted Spoon
Octopus Skull
Golden Squid Dress
Ink of Profanity
Flying Marmalade
I dunno about you guys, but I have a hankering to draw a golden squid dress…..
Last night was the closing show for “The Legend of En”. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported us in our efforts in bringing this installation to the Milwaukee art scene. Special thanks goes out to the amazing crew at the Borg Ward. Their unwavering support made this show possible.
We would also like to thank our sponsors The Bomb shelter bar and the Sparrow Collective, as well as our pivate donors for their material and financial support. We love you all.
Studio Sunday already has more projects in the works, including a ninja like infiltration of the APE expo in San Fran. OK… well.. we paid for a table, so it’s not really an infiltration.. but they still have no idea what they are in for. Does anyone know how to get a 4 foot wide aluminum robot head on a plane as a carry-on? No?
Had to include a pic of Capeti (I think that’s how they spelled it.) He is the resident gallery cat and most adorable thing ever. He kept a close eye on the proceedings all week to make sure no one slacked off.
Warning: There is the occasional bit of mature language. If you are easily offended, you have our sincere apologies. This is just the video covering day one. We have a few more to cut and upload, so keep watching.
Nervous as hell, but the to-do list keeps shrinking. Item by item, day by day.
For your viewing pleasure: The Floating Island, as drawn by Tara! Don’t ask questions about the lake/waterfall in the middle; just let the science-defying oddity embrace you.
Right at this moment, Topher has been working on paintings for the Obsidian Cave, Brent has been working on the big-daddy fish for the Electric Sea, Tara is painting a mural for the floating island, and Jackie is finishing up her digital paintings for the Onion Palace.
If that doesn’t pique your curiosity about what’s in store for our upcoming exhibit in August, “The Legend of En”, then we’re not sure what will!
Here’s what we’ve been up to today:
Brent hammered out the base of the big-daddy fish in about five hours. We’re starting to think that he can do anything with that pink insulation foam, and that is a dangerous thing, indeed…
Topher is nearly done with his fourth painting– only two more to go!
And here is the fourth finished painting for the Onion Queen’s palace. Two more to go!
This is the second painting I’ve completed in the last week! Throughout this project I’ve been finishing roughly two paintings a week, which is the most productive I think I’ve ever been… it’s exhausting, but extremely rewarding. Of the two, I have to admit that this is my favorite
This is a small taste of what you’re going to see at the exhibit in August… we’re super excited over here, and we hope you are, too!
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been in the process of constructing the floating island that serves as our protagonist’s home. The island will also be one of the first elements of our story the viewers will be introduced to, so we’re putting extra care into its awesome-ness. We’ve been pretty lucky during the construction phase so far, since we’ve been making it all up as we go along, but we can already tell the result is going to be more than satisfactory!
Our story is the tale of a young girl named En and her journey to bring her home back to life after it has been ravaged by a mechanical curse. With the aid of an elder Wolf, she must leave her forest on a floating island and visit the realm of the Onion Queen. She then discovers a floating ivory tea ceremony in an obsidian maze, and braves the depths of an electric sea in order to locate the Pieces of Sovereignty that might save her home. In the end, to save the world, En must destroy a thousand-eyed beast before it consumes all that she holds dear.
Coming August 2009 at the Borg Ward collective gallery! Read the blog to check out our on-going progress on this fantastic installation!
We’ve discovered through our various sculpting adventures that the best material for making giant, lightweight sculptures for this exhibit happens to be a particularly hideous shade of pink. On the upside, it’s cheap, the hardware store is a short drive that-a-way, and it’s super fun to slice apart with a hot wire!
We’re approaching Go Time over here. The REAL Go Time, I mean. Not the mellow, trance-like Go Time that we here at Studio Sunday are perpetually suspended in. But I digress.
We have roughly 7 weeks left until opening night at the Borg Ward, and the air is crackling with electricty. Cutting to the chase, we seem to be kicking an abnormal amount of ass for a four-person team working on such a large-scale project. I’ll let the following pictures (along with their captions) speak for themselves.
Pink insulation foam sheets. 4'x8' for $14 a sheet. Tell your friends!
Brent sculpting fine details into some of the smaller foam sculptures with a soldering iron.
A "Piece of Sovereignty" in its primordial pink foam state.
Topher paints the gateway to the Ivory Tea Ceremony that floats above the Pixel Demon's mouth.
Jackie touches up one of her final pieces.
A silly sketch of our protagonist that Topher drew. It has no place in the exhibit. It's got a special place in our hearts, though.
I’m working on a wall paper pattern for my section of the installation. I’ve been working on ways to make the pattern in a way that’s pretty, and not terribly time consuming, so I thought I’d experiment with screen printing:
I recently ordered some mask ease for easy screen printing (and because it's much cheaper and easier to maintain than photo emulsion...)
Turns out mask ease is perfect for "quick" screen printing!
Metallic blue FTW!
My first print failed... I learned later that I probably should have washed the screen before printing >.>
... and then Brent swooped in and magically fixed everything. Like always XP
Brent was in the basement adding on to the wolf skeleton-- we knew it was gonna be big, but we didn't think it would be *that* big. It's gonna look awesome when it's finished!
<3 Jackie!
EDIT: Just as I finished publishing this post, Brent started working on the story again! The finished rough draft is due this Wednesday, so we’re all busting our humps to get ‘er done. Woo! \o/
Installation opening has been pushed back to August, which the gang and I have ultimately decided is a good thing. This is excellent, because it means the show has a gallery to open in thanks to Kevin Soen and everyone else at the Borg Ward in Milwaukee! It’s a gorgeous space, and we’re all pretty much salivating as we plan our installation.
The remaining days of February and the first week of March are what we all have dubbed the “concept days” for the installation, so I’ve been prototyping a sculpture, scribbling out some fairy tale fluff text and putting together some architectural concepts.
Sculpture bits by Jackie!
The elusive Shopping Cart fish, made by Brent.
Tara and Topher have been hard at work as well, concepting their asses off– I’ll update this post with images of their progress as soon as we get them!
Our Fairy Tale installation is progressing through the thumbnail stages very nicely. Topher came over to the studio today to chill and make more exhibit and character thumbnails, Tara created the first draft of our statement of intent (it’s pretty good, so it may well be the final draft), Brent banged out a prototype and Jackie jotted out a technical description of the exhibit in addition to some light thumbnailing.
We have a meeting this Sunday with an esteemed colleague to see if we can anchor some gallery space for this epic creation. We’ll give you more details once that meeting has come and gone.
Jackie's thumbnails for the evening
This is what happens when you give Brent 45 minutes alone with a shopping cart.
As in, they’re selling fast. REAL fast. Take a trip to our Etsy store and be sure to secure a new best friend before they’re all sold out!
(Editors note: Ragtags are not on actual fire. Its a metaphor for good sales. )
The Calendar is NIGH upon you!
We will have the official Studio Sunday 2009 calendar available any day now! Keep your eye out for it!
BANG! POW! BIFF!
Topher’s current comic project is nearing completion!
Installation!
While our search for a display space is still in the works, the installation itself is powering forward like some kind of wild and out-of-control iron horse. Mechanical fish, floating islands and electric seas are abound in this post-it note inspired fairy tale!
Breaktime!
After removing the post-its, that wall had become decidedly barren.
Hooray for group projects! We are planning a collaboration/installation thing together, and we made a ton of progress today– Post-it Notes are the bee’s knees when it comes to generating ideas!
The theme of our collaboration installation thing? Storytelling and fairy tales. So far we’ve come up with a basic story that roughly follows the literary guidelines of a fairy tale, and we plan to implement it into 3-D space… and stuff. We’re still in the planning stages, so this idea is likely to take off into many splendid directions.
As a token of thanks to you and everyone else who helped make this exhibit possible, we are offering the prose portion of our story, The Legend of En, free-of-charge so you can read it at your leisure and share it with your loved ones.
Here’s an exerpt of the ideas we didn’t use:
And here is the fourth finished painting for the Onion Queen’s palace. Two more to go!
