For those of you who either know me, or who have been following the artistic journey I have been on, you know that I am always into trying new things, whether as a professional artist, or as an educator. In the classroom, to facilitate all the students’ needs, I sometimes modify or play around with projects…I mean, isn’t that what art is all about?
One of my students enjoyed building a massive spider for the haunted house. So much so, that when I thought about a possible next project “Hey____, how would you like to build a moose?” slipped out of my mouth. A Moose?!? Reindeer given the time of year maybe. This was promptly followed up by the thought, “What WAS I thinking?!” Within 10 minutes, said student had taken a garbage bag, stuffed it with newspaper, wrapped tape around it, and had produced a very life-sized replica of a moose head. What to do, what to do…You can’t exactly make a life-sized free form paper mache moose, so I needed a substructure. Luckily enough, I am fortunate to have some great colleagues who help me out when I engage on these wanderings of madness. He built a sawhorse out of wood to give me a stable structure. Hence, when you see the pic, you can see we were somewhat limited by the shape of it when doing the legs (they are slightly splayed lol).
Bunches and bunches of recycled newspaper were used with masking tape to create the sculptural form. Then layers and layers of paper mache were added. A coat of gesso and voila, we were ready to paint. There were some discussion as to whether or not to make it a Christmas moose given the season, or a natural moose as one would see in the wild. After some thought, I remembered the famous Toronto moose where each one was turned into a work of art. I thought about possible art to work into the piece and decided on a mixture of Haida, Woodland School and Australian Aboriginal styles. It isn’t done yet as there is a lot of detail work I would like to add, but you get the idea…who knows where we will go next!
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