Mood Indigo

In recent days, two books are on my mind: The Wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami and Mood Indigo (also known as Froth on the Daydream) by Boris Vian.  Both of them were favorites of mine at various ages.
After returning from whirlwind trip to Hungary I had a rougher than expected transition back to the factory-life. It's interesting what a few days of pause can do to the ingrained work process; I had to make tremendous efforts to remind myself of how I've been doing things. The first mold I made after returning was a complete disaster. Looking back at it, it was riddled with bad timing (on my part part) and curious accidents (on the part of the plaster positive, which kept falling apart). The mold works just fine now.
The week I returned, they started covering the large window panels at the factory to protect the ware from the cold drafts that inevitably sneak in during winter. Even though the days were sunny outside, one could not get a sense of it in the inside. Humid heat building up in the casting shop and the light haze through the oppressing plastic dampened my mood for a few days.
With being gone the residency reached its turning point. I have a little over 4 more work weeks left.

The days are short, seems like the nights are even shorter.
I'm barely getting more than 4hours of sleep. I have to constantly remind myself that I need to stop doing side projects, like the constructing pedestals or the little buildings (see pics), playing with the color slips and conducting other experiments with Kohler's unlimited possibilities.

I think I'm having a hard time giving up certain mental versions and iterations of the project I've thought I could accomplish. The only thing need to be focusing on now is to keep casting the broken fragments I already have molds of. Setting the fragments up in an installation was the idea that brought me here and that is the result I ultimately want to be leaving with.
There are 23 shapes already (23 molds made!!!), - a good enough variety. I'm the only one who would notice if I had ten (or even 2 more) shapes, - meaning that I still need to make 10 new molds.
In order to have the necessary volume of objects for an installation, my energies need to go towards casting: every mold, every day. That pretty much necessitates excluding any other project. I'm slowly forcing myself into this mindset but it does not feel right because the raison d'être of being here is that of constant innovation and of playing with the unlimited possibilities.


On the plus side, I had a few of my wonderful friends visiting this past week and I got to give several lectures to college freshmen from Millwaukee. This latter reminded me of interacting with my students, which I duly miss. A photographer came to my studio to take some artist-at-work shots. After a brief but inspiring conversation about my project we decided to frame the shots with the casting shop in the background, which I feel is completely appropriate considering the subject of my work.

Finally, here is the Duke playing Mood Indigo.

sunset over the factory, November 5