Moz
12-14-2009, 03:11 PM
Pie in the Sky Pipe Dream
completed: April 2005, titled, dated, signed
described: Mixed media - oil paints, plastic tubing, glass beads, hot glue, leather, findings, magic
wt.: 1 lb 1 oz
HWD: 10 1/4" x 8 1/4" x 2 7/8"
This is essentially the first Assemblage work I ever made.
It started out as an oil painting on a canvas board that was just sitting around one day. I had come across some floral arrangement pieces that had little "pies" attached to wires, and while trying to decide what to paint, they caught my eye from my pen holder, where I had stuck them. Inspired, and not really aware of the properties of various surfaces and objects, I grabbed my trusty glue gun, and some silver glitter glue sticks and mounted the pies to the blue painted board. Looking at it, I thought of the old phrase, "Pie-in-the-sky," which is a saying coined in 1911 in a parody of the old Hymnal, "In the Sweet By and By," to mock the Salvation Army's priority of salvation over starvation:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
During World War II the phrase, "pie in the sky," came to mean any situation of happiness that had little to no chance of realization.
As I looked at the little pies glued somewhat gaudily onto the blue board, envisioning pies in the skies, I decided to paint some clouds. So I swished some Flake White around the pies, and realized that it really wasn't quite working...So I stared at it and thought about dreams, and pie in the sky dreams, and then I thought of "pipe dreams," and how that phrase referred to drug-induced dreams from smoking opium pipes, and meant fantastical, or incredible situations, and the two phrases became a conjunction in my mind..."Pie in the sky pipe dreams..."
I stopped painting the clouds, undecided whether to have them cover the entire canvas or not, and decided that I needed to devise some form of "piping," since I had been a quilter in a previous time, and liked the play on words. I found some plastic tubing, and grabbed a jar of dark blue opalescent seed beads from a gorgeous necklace that had broken, and poured them into the tubing. I sealed the ends with a Bic lighter and a pair of pliers, and then clear hot glued the tubing between the pies.
Hmmmm. Interesting. I liked the effect, and decided I didn't want the clouds all over the canvas, but would leave them as two shapes, to represent two people, each with their own "dreams" (Almost all of my works deal with interactions of some sort, usually with Love intwined somewhere, but not always...). The tubing was quite stiff and uncooperative, but I wanted to emphasize the cloud areas to help with the sky connotation, so I grabbed some dark blue suede stripping, and glued that around the cloud areas with some airplane cement (Hey, I was kind of "playing around," not really intending this to be of any real note...). Then, since the suede looked a little inconsistent with edging the clouds, I glued some small pearls on the inner edges in places to contribute to this odd, fantastical creation, and decided to quit while I was ahead...
After about 3 years, the bead piping started to come loose from the oil paint, and I did a repair job, this time using GOOP adhesive, but knowing that this is not the best of an archival piece, I will be pouring an epoxy layer over it, to help seal the pies to the canvas, as well as the bead tubing. This will encase it all as a single piece, and then the only real potential damage will be to the wires suspending the pies from the canvas.
completed: April 2005, titled, dated, signed
described: Mixed media - oil paints, plastic tubing, glass beads, hot glue, leather, findings, magic
wt.: 1 lb 1 oz
HWD: 10 1/4" x 8 1/4" x 2 7/8"
This is essentially the first Assemblage work I ever made.
It started out as an oil painting on a canvas board that was just sitting around one day. I had come across some floral arrangement pieces that had little "pies" attached to wires, and while trying to decide what to paint, they caught my eye from my pen holder, where I had stuck them. Inspired, and not really aware of the properties of various surfaces and objects, I grabbed my trusty glue gun, and some silver glitter glue sticks and mounted the pies to the blue painted board. Looking at it, I thought of the old phrase, "Pie-in-the-sky," which is a saying coined in 1911 in a parody of the old Hymnal, "In the Sweet By and By," to mock the Salvation Army's priority of salvation over starvation:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
During World War II the phrase, "pie in the sky," came to mean any situation of happiness that had little to no chance of realization.
As I looked at the little pies glued somewhat gaudily onto the blue board, envisioning pies in the skies, I decided to paint some clouds. So I swished some Flake White around the pies, and realized that it really wasn't quite working...So I stared at it and thought about dreams, and pie in the sky dreams, and then I thought of "pipe dreams," and how that phrase referred to drug-induced dreams from smoking opium pipes, and meant fantastical, or incredible situations, and the two phrases became a conjunction in my mind..."Pie in the sky pipe dreams..."
I stopped painting the clouds, undecided whether to have them cover the entire canvas or not, and decided that I needed to devise some form of "piping," since I had been a quilter in a previous time, and liked the play on words. I found some plastic tubing, and grabbed a jar of dark blue opalescent seed beads from a gorgeous necklace that had broken, and poured them into the tubing. I sealed the ends with a Bic lighter and a pair of pliers, and then clear hot glued the tubing between the pies.
Hmmmm. Interesting. I liked the effect, and decided I didn't want the clouds all over the canvas, but would leave them as two shapes, to represent two people, each with their own "dreams" (Almost all of my works deal with interactions of some sort, usually with Love intwined somewhere, but not always...). The tubing was quite stiff and uncooperative, but I wanted to emphasize the cloud areas to help with the sky connotation, so I grabbed some dark blue suede stripping, and glued that around the cloud areas with some airplane cement (Hey, I was kind of "playing around," not really intending this to be of any real note...). Then, since the suede looked a little inconsistent with edging the clouds, I glued some small pearls on the inner edges in places to contribute to this odd, fantastical creation, and decided to quit while I was ahead...
After about 3 years, the bead piping started to come loose from the oil paint, and I did a repair job, this time using GOOP adhesive, but knowing that this is not the best of an archival piece, I will be pouring an epoxy layer over it, to help seal the pies to the canvas, as well as the bead tubing. This will encase it all as a single piece, and then the only real potential damage will be to the wires suspending the pies from the canvas.