Castilene, a difficult + magical modeling medium

Castilene is a new (to me) take on classic wax-based modeling clays like Roma Plastilina or Klean Klay; I find it to be infinitely cleaner and more pleasant to work with, and you're not left with the smell of the product on you and a greasy feel on your hands for days. It's sulfur-free meaning that it will not inhibit curing of most common moldmaking products, and its label description states that no known compound can degrade the material. Amazing!

I needed some slabs for a current project so I turned my home kitchen into a clay station. My studio isn't currently outfitted with that kind of open space, nor do I have a microwave or hot plate like I do at home.

For a good 24 hours I was just petrified by how incredibly hard and brittle the "medium"-softness Castilene was. It didn't warm up easily or break up into soft chunks like Klean Klay likes to do. I was afraid of heating it up, thinking it might be messy.

I finally dumped out a 2.5 lb box ($25 at Compleat Sculptor) into a large ceramic serving dish and started warming it up. I used the inverter/soften setting for a few minutes, then put it on full blast for about a minute. This let the clay get malleable and soft, but I noticed that microwaving doesn't heat the clay evenly. You're left with some crusty, dry-feeling edges and then some crazy hot spots. I recommend mixing up the batch and letting it marinate in its own heat for about 5 minutes. The overheated clay will warm up the dry bits.

I wiped the counter down with mineral oil, the way you would flour for baking, and started rolling, smashing, cutting, doing anything I could to get a nice even slab. I'd take the trimmings, throw it in the bowl, re-heat, and continue to make slabs. The clay takes on a gorgeous smooth hard sheen when it is cold, and maintains rigidity at room temperature. I LOVE IT.

It is difficult to work with and isn't quite grab-and-go like Klean Klay, which I would recommend for small less-precise or press-molded projects, but Castilene definitely blew my mind a little when I started working with it this week.

April studio purge

Things are in flux at the studio I work out of, both inside my space and out, so I thought today was a good day to completely wipe clean the "gallery" wall, put the salt experiments in storage, and start fresh.

Close-up of the only thing on the wall. Flat black gouache, crystals and sequins.

Mail came today! From Greece, New Zealand and from Bullseye Glass :) Just a couple of nose rings from Etsy plus kiln shelves, kiln posts, and four sample packs of their full sheet fusible line. This will help me order glass in the future without any guesswork; their "striker" colors which change tone after hitting a certain temperature have already been fired, eliminating any confusion.

A deadline I've set with a new client prototyping a clear cast tank....

And lastly something silly I spilled for myself before locking up for the night, because I believe in the restorative powers of "not taking yourself too seriously" on days when you've taken yourself much too seriously:

High glitz

I haven't had much time for the studio until today, Sunday, and I got in early before everyone else, basked in the sunshine pouring terribly, beautifully, through my skylight, and played with a few things....

A sort of sketch with origami papers, saltwater and gouache.

Crystalline little coastlines.

I added some crystals and tried to re-imagine the scale. What if these were a distant range of mountaintops?

Gold and silver foiled origami paper. See how the salt crystals only clung to the un-foiled white paper? That was unexpected.

I've also unabashedly been having great fun playing with sequins. I source mine from Cartwright's and I have kept about a hundred or so varieties and colors for about three years without knowing exactly what to do with them. I like that they add 3D and volume in miniature doses. I love the glitter, the iridescence and the plastickiness.

Transparent colorless mini-sequins.

Using a light adhesive to create clusters solid enough for a salt pour.

Novelty sequins can be so humorous and pretty at the same time. I like the slight milkiness of the wet gum cement here.

Like lilypads crowded onto a pond.

This month, we're also going to begin shooting these sketchbooks I worked on all through 2013. The first three volumes have 50 images each, while the contents of the final book are more nebulous––this is when my paintings started getting larger more regularly, more three-dimensional, and more difficult to contain in a book.

Compiling these black books into a digital book format will be an ongoing project.

My second-most favorite pair of Dansko clogs...

Lastly, these lovely little air-plant arrangements have appeared, quietly, along the walkway by my studio. Who has put these here? I love them so very much!

Aerophytes in geometric arrangements!

A variety of results & progress around the shop...

The dyeing went wonderfully. The cats got into the skeins in the middle of the night, so they're looking a little bedraggled, but the colors took beautifully. I did a second round yesterday since the rig was already set up, where I tried various levels of dilution with spring water, and I love the results. Pastels on gleaming fibers, my dream!

They have a bit of "bedhead"...

Maybe I haven't gotten the hang of Parme Rose (some dyes are trickier than others), but I keep getting a camel-ish tone. It's lovely, but not as pink as I'd like.

Oh, that lavender, though...

I checked up on the salt-and-sequin pour. I find the result very humorous, but perhaps I've hit an end with this line of inquiry, at least for now.

Maybe a map of an island?

These crystals are smaller and more uniform. I'm not a chemist but I assume the smaller puddle evaporated more quickly and didn't give it time to develop those lavish, massive encrustations from the earlier salt pour.

My father picked me up some Aji-no-moto MSG (monosodium glutamate) from the Japanese market and I left this guy in the studio today to dry down overnight. I'm a huge fan of MSG conceptually and practically, though I use it extremely rarely in cooking (once in a while, a pinch in a pot of rice is magic). There's so much cultural and gustatory interest in the chemical for me; the idea of "umami" is fascinating; the branding of this flavor-awareness as Asian-specific is also fascinating. It's less neurotoxic and scary than people think. I'd like to play with MSG as a material for a while...

Dust from an old cup trapped in the solution.

I unboxed some murrine I created in Kait Rhoads' fabulous workshop I took a few years ago and have been arranging them loosely while imagining some fused worry stones for anxious types like me. People are so fond of the idea of murrine being a cross-section, as well as the notion that it is drawn thinly to concentrate a pattern and give a high degree of intricacy. Of course this interests me, but I also like thinking of these murrine in a totally different way: as each individual piece being a prismatic little beacon that light shines THROUGH, giving geometric and colored light projections.

Finally, on my way out the door, caught the shop owners working hard on a Sunday night...

At-home silk dyeing with Sennelier Tinfix

It's the weekend. I'm going to do a little at-home project before I head out to the studio.

A few weeks ago, I picked out a few shades of French silk dye from Dharma Trading Co., plus some Synthrapol (a surfactant/excellent fiber cleanser), urea, and a couple of kinds of fluorescent acid dyes. Today I'm running a batch of silk threading that will be used for our everyday-wear pearl, bead and geometric crystal necklaces.

Sitting in the living room with the cats, measuring out a few skeins at different lengths. This is a size of thread that'll fit 11/0 seed beads perfectly and make for very fine, delicate colorways underneath clear glass.

For these skeins, the ends can be trimmed off because we're not using it for stitching/weaving/anything requiring continuous thread. This makes it easier for me to handle, too.

From left to right, Sennelier Tinfix dyes in Parme Rose 34, Indigo Gray 99, Cloud Grey 94, Indian Purple 43 (one of the most insanely saturated colors I have ever seen!). These cheapo foam brushes are great for dabbing on color.

My kitchen rig. Upturned colander as steamer, our least-favorite ceramic plates as weights to hold the paper-rolled skeins in place. I have an electric water boiler continuously ready with the next batch of boiling water so the steaming isn't interrupted.

Check back to see what becomes of these silk threads. I'm thinking layered seed bead necklaces using beautiful transparent Miyuki Delicas, but we'll see....