Entry 002: Woman's Shelter Project-- working out the kinks

Last weekend two other lovely ladies and I began working on our project for the local Woman's Shelter-- our plan is to simply make sculpture hands and somehow create them into a tree at the end. It was a project that we are doing in conjunction to the "Take Back the Night": to raise awareness of sexual abuse and domestic violence.

When asking for advice on how to go about this in a cost effective manner, the art director at our college suggested we try paper mache...

All I can say is: NEVER AGAIN. It nearly ruined my beautiful table, not to mention my cat was trying to eat the flour paste.

We ended up going to get plaster cloth and trying it out. And I have to say, it works a lot better than paper mache ever would. And considering it's convenience: I think it's worth the little extra money.

Currently they are drying in my linen closet, and here is a little picture of what they look like:

We both tried different techniques when creating the hands with plaster. My hand, which is standing up, was created by vertically applying the plaster cloth on the fingers, then overlapping horizontally for added strength. My friend's hand was done first and unfortunately was a little weak until applied with more plaster. Since there was so much plaster applied to her hand rather than mine, I feel that it would be best to use the technique I used to save a little bit of the plaster cloth.

I will keep posted on how this project goes.


xxx