ground sloths/exquisite corpses

remember that winston churchill wolfman a couple entries below? no? ok, well, he was the practice head for a lifesize prehistoric ground sloth my company recently made. in fact, we created the sloth and a wyandot warrior for the firelands historical society in northern ohio. this is  a page from their latest newsletter...

i was tasked with surface lead on the sloth; the team and i guided it through digital design, armature weldments, casting the fiberglass, furring, and finally, silicone painting and hair poking. it achieves a certain look, but i do not recommend ever poking thousands of single hairs into silicone as a matter of maintaining one's sanity. in the end, the deadline prevented megajeff  (as he's called by the bone nerds) from being taken to where i really wanted to take him, but the client was pretty happy and i was kinda tired of looking at him anyway.

it is pure coincidence that the beast is named the jefferson ground sloth, after occasional paleontologist and maybe relative, thomas jefferson. it is also a coincidence that the warrior depicted is one of tecumseh's followers. tecumseh has been of particular significance to me over the years and at one point a statue i was to make myself. it was a bronze though, and without funding, fizzled out. hell, it might've been toppled eventually anyway with the collateral damage from differing opinions  these days. who is to say.
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from wikipedia:
"Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis), is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed."
thus, my friend tim mcmichael decided that in this time of covid 19, he would engage his fellow isolated artists in such a surrealist exercise with the panels being carefully mailed to each other and worked on in succession. it's a little tough to see, but here are the contributions of tim mcmichael, christian schmit, julie klear, and myself.
this measures at 12 1/4" x 48". i quite like it, and everyone involved.

i'm not entirely sure what mine is trying to say....it is a little bit of a nod to hokusai with the predominant shape and mt. fuji in the background, and the crying leopards, well, they feel like a constellation or nebula in the night sky. julie's panel before mine provided the only clue of cut out shapes, so i kind of took it that direction.


the whole exercise was a nice kick in the ass, really.

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