The body representation measurements were obtained by measuring Tyler Budge, our professor and then multiplied by four. My portion of the project was the right side of the face including the eye. The head measurements that Nik and I came up with were: head circumference-22.5"(4)=90"/2=45" which was my half of the head. The Neck- 18"(4)=72"/2=36" and the top of the head to the neck- 10.5"(4)=42". The only available tools to measure the body was string and it's not the most precise way of measuring and wish I had brought my fabric measuring tape. I think we had the measurements correct, yet when we drew the head out using the measurements, the head was misshapened and resembled a mushroom cloud. Nik, Kayla and I ended up coming in to Tyler's studio over the weekend to retrace the head and it was a success. We then cut out the pieces leaving room for the lips and the nose for Kayla and attached pieces of wood to the sides of the face where the ears would approximately be placed and also served as an anchor point for Kayla's ears. Then the fun began. I knew I wanted to work with metal and had decided on Aluminum. Originally I had wanted to use this project as a means of brushing up on my welding technique, but as I am on a financial and time budget, I had accepted some free aluminum roof flashing, which is really too thin to weld and decided to use that for my piece. I then purchased two more rolls of aluminum flashing from Lowe's and the cost was about $30.00 total. My original idea was one of anatomy. I wanted to create an anatomically correct muscle structure for the face utilizing my anatomy and physiology textbook for a reference. I wanted to do it with small strips but that concept didn't really work out since you would have not been able to decipher the muscles from each other. So I tried my best to use large pieces for every muscle. I then cut and bent them to make the correct curvature, then fastened the pieces with pop rivets. As I moved downward toward the jaw I ran into trouble getting the perfect jaw angle and the neck muscles were larger than my aluminum allowed so in a fit of desperation and frustration I cut the two larger neck muscles into strips. This allowed me to bend them into the correct formation and I think it was the best move short of heating the metal. I then connected metal string used for hanging pictures to a Styrofoam ball, covered that in tin foil and hung it from the eye socket to be consistent with my childhood story. The story I am referring to was when I was running at full speed from the top of the hill where my house stood to the field down below, I did not know my father had been working on the fencing he was building for our horses and he had only completed hanging the top barbed wire, then quit for the day. I hit the barbed wire at top speed and was propelled backwards. I was sure I had popped my eye out of its socket but when I gathered my self and felt the damage it was only a small cut above my right eye, deep enough, however, to leave a scar.I then nailed the remaining bottom pieces to the neck and stepped back to gander at my creation. I was a little worried because at this point in the process it just looked like a mess of metal. But when we connected it to Nik's left side of the face and Kayla added her facial features it looked like the robots from Miyazaki's Castle in The Sky.
Connecting it to Nik's piece only called for a few screws which were accessible through the gaps in the metal and we then screwed on Kayla's facial features that were made of Styrofoam.
The day of installation came and as I have no childcare I was unable to come earlier and was only able to help for 15 minutes before my next class, but I would have liked offer more assistance.
We had some problems getting the piece up and had to make the decision to leave it resting on the ground at waist level. It was a little frustrating because it required the comments and opinions of every one's piece, yet there were some people who dropped off their body parts and didn't show up for the installation so we were left fixing and screwing their body parts together. It should have been more of a team effort and I am disappointed in those people who did not make it to class.
All in all, it looks fantastic and I am proud of those fellow class mates who put a lot of effort into their piece.
