withlacoochee

[withlacoochee]

Materials:

Alja Safe

water

mixing buckets

measuring buckets

power drill

mixing wand

extra heavy duty incredible duct tape

hot glue (and gun)

milk jugs

Alja Safe is honestly the coolest material I've ever worked with. It's the stuff they use to make molds of teeth at dentists' office. It's incredibly accurate and insane to work with. That being said, it is pretty expensive. Because I was going to make several large life casts, my art department bought a big box of the stuff, which was a godsend. 

It comes in a powder, and like plaster, you want to keep it as dry as possible until you're ready to use it. In Florida, it's humid even in our dry winter months so I keep the box in the basement, behind the ceramics classroom where it's nice and dry. 

The process is pretty quick, with a bit of set up time that definitely pays to be careful during. This was the first apparatus I built for the alginate casting. In my later ones, I started using milk jugs more than anything else because they're much easier to work with. You want a soft plastic because you'll be pulling it apart at the end. That being said, this boot (or whatever casing you need for the particular body part you're casting) needs to be water tight. The alginate is a bit thicker than water but blow outs are a huge deal because this stuff is so expensive. I got to the point on my final boot where I hot glued every inch of seam after a bad experience with purple goo shooting out the bottom because of poor planning on my second one. 

When you're constructing it, you want to make sure that the body part can float in it. If it touches any of the sides, those blemishes will show up in the final product. 

The Alja Safe is mixed in a 1:1 ratio to water which means pretty simple math once you figure out what the volume of your apparatus is minus the volume of your body part. It's a bit of guess work but it becomes really easy if you use gallon jugs because you can just count them up. With this first one, we poured water into it and then dumped it into a 5 gallon bucket. This method is incredibly messy and pretty inaccurate because we ended up mixing a whole bunch of extra alginate. Alja Safe and alginate are the same thing by the way, one is just the brand name for the skin safe type of alginate. 

We pretty much just eyeballed the right amount of alginate with the measurement of water beside it. You can go all out with weighing it but it's fairly simple to eyeball it in two of the same type of container. 

When you mix, you should use a power drill with a mixing wand attached. You have to make a vortex in the water while the other person is pouring the powdered Alja Safe into the water. Mix for a couple of minutes until it's past the point of looking like cake batter. You don't want clumps of powder affecting the wonderful goop that will capture your body part perfectly. Splash a bit of water around your leg/foot to break the surface tension between your skin and the Alja Safe.  

When we poured the alginate into the boot, we put a bit in the bottom, then I placed my foot in and my helpers poured the alginate goo into the boot around my calf. Let the goo set up for about 15 minutes (the product will come with exact instructions but that's how long I waited) until it's solid. It's a weird experience but oddly enjoyable. You have to make sure not to wiggle too much and that you're not touching the sides of the boot but other than that it's pretty cool to balance your foot in goo for 15 minutes. 

Getting out of it is a whole different story. Sometimes your foot gets stuck. It's a good idea to have an air compressor on hand but I only had to use it one time and that was the time I had the blow out and everything went pretty poorly. When the alginate is set, you can start wiggling your toes and foot to slowly pull it up. This is a good point to have someone stand on the board while you pull up with your leg. Your gluing skills will be tested but trust me, it works. You'll hear a disgusting squelching sound as it comes out and that's good too because it means air is getting around your foot. 

The alginate will hold steady for about four hours, but it's best to pour your material right away so you can just get it all done. If there's a bit of water in the heel of the foot, that's okay, just take a paper towel and lightly mop it up before the second pour. I make plaster positives of my feet from the alginate casts but I've seen people use cement and a bunch of other materials. I'll be going through the plaster pouring process in my next post. 

[withlacoochee]

I've been working on my senior thesis all semester but I'm going to post an all out how to for mold making and life casting in the next few days. And a bunch of process shots of my installation. 

[withlacoochee]

Being a woman artist is great until you have to flip a 70lb mold upside down into a bucket.

[withlacoochee]

Sanding all night.

[withlacoochee]

Just got back from Art Basel in Miami. Time to get back to work.

[withlacoochee]

Tonight

[withlacoochee]

Things are looking up. I'm working on something besides my senior project!

[withlacoochee]

A lot of what I do in my sketchbook is gathering information on other artists and their work. There's a fair amount of self questioning too, but I like sketching other artists' work, it breaks up the pages with heavy writing. I'll usually follow up a sketch with a little blurb about their work or a quote that strikes me as interesting.  

[withlacoochee]

Don't mind me while I fangirl over this work. 

Sharon Sides tree ring pattern furniture

[withlacoochee]

This piece is almost up to where I want it to be. I need to work on the bark and the contrast in the dark areas and then I'll be ready to submit it for the student show at the end of the month. 

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Ideas can be so frustratingly hard to sketch out when you're not familiar with the material you're drawing. In this case, I abandoned the project on the left because of all the foreseen technical difficulties that both I and my professors had about it. 

[withlacoochee]

I'm getting to the end of my sketchbook. The top page spread was written in January and the bottom was done last week. I'm coming full circle on ideas I didn't have enough patience for before. The latest idea is an amalgamation of a lot of different things I've experimented with and it's quite ready to be wholly visualized but it's coming along. Sometimes it's better not to have a solid idea from the get go. Experimentation leads to bigger and better ideas. 

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Sometimes it takes me a while to finish a sketch. I like to finalize everything in ink so shading can get monotonous if I'm doing something like stippling or I move on from an idea for a while. 

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These two pieces just got into Arbor Aid 2013 juried art show in Pittsburg! I'm so excited and can't wait to mail them off. 

[withlacoochee]

I've created a project that will be so infuriatingly frustrating in the coming months if I choose to pursue it. I'm weighing the cost of infuriation with the possible outcome of a really technical and conceptual piece. I need to improve the concept before I begin practicing technical skills that I may not end up using.

[withlacoochee]

I'm running back through my sketchbook and drafts folders to find ideas to revisit. There are a few ideas that keep showing through and all of them point away from this series I'm trying to complete right now. I need to flesh them out more in terms of materials and concept but this is a bit of what I'm trying to get at with my work: 

How do I emulate or recreate the feeling of the preciousness of air beneathe the surface? The brownness of everything, the pull of the current, the urge to fight everything and then just letting go, coming up for air and floating in the sun while the river carries me away. The waves at the beach were a constant bombarbment. The only ripples I was used to were from boats not daring to disturb the wake and current of the river.

And there’s an enclosement there between the banks. The sky is big but it’s just air above our heads. The trees that entangle themselves by root and branch to create and cement the loose packed soil of the bank make you feel safe and afraid. Their darkness even in the brightness of midday is nervewracking to a child always fearing alligators or some more mysterious foe. 

The work itself is going to go back to incorporating the bodily into 'natural' elements. The one that I'm most excited about right now involves a hammock and jumps off of my freckle piece from last year with much more feeling and fervor than that piece even attempted. 

[withlacoochee]

If this can be done, so can an idea I've put to the back of my mind. I have to understand the difference in materials being painted though.  There is an absolute difference between wood and fabric and the way each behaves with a form underneath it. But this is reinvigorating. 

Antonio Santin

Artist Antonio Santin Born 1978 in Madrid, lives and works in New York.

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