Liftoff lands in New Bern!
Hello all! sorry for the lack of updates lately, I’ve been extra busy with classes and such, but here is the latest news in the wide world of Landon.
On March 19 2010, I installed my Piece “Liftoff” at the New Bern Airport in New Bern NC! Here are some pictures of the installed work!
7 other artists had installed works, I’ll be sure to post a compilation of all the other pieces when I get a chance, until then keep working and making art!
-RLP
An American Tail: Landon Goes West
Hello all! Landon here reporting on my recent trip to the Mesalands Community College foundry in Tucomcari New Mexico! We (the ECU grads and undergrads that made the trip out) flew out Sunday March 7, Courtesy of East Carolina University funding, and came back the following Sunday, the 14th. We went out for a week long iron casting conference, courtesy of the ECU funding department. Its was great out there! The facility was amazing! Originally built to accommodate the casting of fossils found in the area in bronze, the amazing facilities here include a great wax room, a well equipped Ceramic shell department, kilns for burning out ceramic shells and sand molds, and furnaces for casting aluminum bronze and iron. For those of you that don’t know Ceramic shell is a mold making process, like the resin bonded sand mold displayed in an earlier post, in which you dip the wax blank in a ceramic slurry liquid, then alternate fine ceramic sand and more slurry coats til you have a thick layer of hardened material around the entire wax. We then cut the top of the cup off, and burn out all the wax and carbon in a high temperature melt out kiln. We came in on Sunday and checked the facility out, meeting the other attendees and faculty at the College. For the first few days we all just hung out in the main area and worked on waxes for shell, then on Wednesday took a day trip of just the ECU students out to Roswell New Mexico. Here are some pictures from the pour, and I’ll have some pictures of myself and some of the other artists on our outing through the UFO capital of the world.
James Richard "Dudders" Dudley with his sacraficed peep.
R. Landon Price Being blessed with his peep
Before we began the actual pour at the end of the week, we had a ceremony thanking everyone for being there, released doves, and were all given a sacrificial peep. That’s right, a marshmallow peep to sacrifice as we wished. Here’’s a picture of myself being blessed with sage before we fired up the furnace.
All in all it was an exciting time! My first (series of) flight(s), included Atlanta, Albuquerque, Milwaukee for some reason, then back to Raleigh. A meandering adventure if there ever was one, I’ll have some photos of the pieces that I cast in Tucomecari in the next post so keep your eyes open!
-RLP
Puppets, Muppets, and the Personification of Abstract Forces.
When people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold the future with stories, the best place by the fire was kept for… The Storyteller.John Hurt in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller
Stories, folktales, legends, myths, these are all just different names for the same form of record keeping. These stories seem to grow exponentially stranger as they grow older, being shaped and inspired, as well as inspiring, art throughout history.
In that respect I have been trying to learn more about the great storytellers of our time, beginning with a very well known and accomplished British parodist. If any of you literary nerds out there have not had the chance to read one of parodist Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, you really don’t know what you’re missing. This world, a mirror of worlds, is a gargantuan disc perched on the back of 4 gigantic elephants, standing on the back of the great world turtle A’Tuin as he soars through the cosmos.
…Pretty cool huh?
The series has so many inside jokes, thinly veiled pop culture references, and just all around well written dialogue its hard to not be amazed. The sheer amount of novels in the series makes reading through them a joy. A big part of Discworld is the concept of belief and the power it has to affect the physical world
Death- YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?
Hogfather p.423
A quote from Death, the anthropomorphic personification of the abstract Idea of death. More commonly known as the grim reaper.Pratchett states that people need to believe in small fantasies, such as Hogfathers (The Discworld version of Santa Claus) and Tooth Fairies, in order to believe in larger ones, such as justice and hope. As Pratchett says elsewhere, fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind; it doesn’t take you anywhere, but it tones up muscles that might.
On another note, Ive been using Mandarific’s Netflix account (Muahaha) and I stumbled across the European/Germanic folklore season of Jim Henson’s <i>The Storyteller</i>. This show is fantastic, it reminds me of the reasons I wanted to get into 3 dimensional art in the first place, the creatures and effects of Henson’s masterful puppeteers astound in every episode. They really show how stories from so long ago can be changed and warped by time, by our time. The modern and near modern media has saturated our collective conciseness so much that we don’t know what the old stories were originally about, so we re-make then, re-tell them. Make them our own. This phenomenon has always intrigued me, how we not only adapt to our surroundings, but our surroundings affect our own perceptions of our history.
I’ve begun working on a series of taking the fundamental elements of our world, Time/Death, Growth/Life/Nature, Energy/Fire/Lightning, and then the Element of Belief itself, and using the stories and superstitions of the western world to personify them, and relate the tales of old to the modern collective consciousness.
In a more practical update, work continues on New Bern! I plan to have the piece fully welded by middle of this coming week, then I’m off to Tucomecary New Mexico for a week long iron casting conference! Wish me luck guys, I’m going to need it.
In the meantime, keep the belief strong, nothing can happen unless you belief you can make it happen.
Schoooooool’s back!
Hello dear readers, its that time of year again! time to rouse ourselves from the turkey and candy induced stupor of the holidays and dive back into the daily grind.
Updates from the home front: Contracts have been sent back to the New Bern sculpture Committee, and I await the starting capitol to get “Liftoff” off the ground (pun completely intended.) Also working on pieces for the New Bern Competition are artists James Richard Dudley, Chase Key, and Johnathon Burger to name a few. Check out some more of Richard’s work by clicking on his link, I’ll try to get more more information from some of the other artists to give a preview of their work s well.
Happy Holidays, from the Studio of RLP!
Hello people of the digital world! Its that time of year again: The Holidays! And do I have some news for you!
First update, I have FINALLY finished the work I posted on here earlier this semester, “Empty Gods”, Images below. If you don’t know, this piece is in following with my ongoing theme of the state of ancient myths in modern society. This piece makes a statement about the treatment of the North Mexican God, Quetzalcoatl God of wisdom and culture, in today’s society (being depicted in video games, cartoons, and on tequila bottles), as the god is emptied out, his innards replaced with wires, his wings make skeletal and thin.
Upcoming events/New work!
Hello dear readers!
Or reader. or maybe I’m just talking to myself here.
Anyway, some upcoming events! I’m submitting a proposal for an outdoor installation at the New Bern airport, some images of my designs coming up in the next week or so, so keep your eyes open!
I am submitting several of my newer pieces for the Down East Sculpture exhibition, which is being hosted by the Pitt County Arts Council, at both Emerge and Mendenhall galleries from February 26th-April 10th. The opening reception will be on February 26th from 6-9 pm, even if Your Truly doesn’t get a few pieces in you should still go check it out if you’re in the area.
How its done: Resin Bonded Sand Molds
A popular casting method among sculptors is to make a resin bonded sand mold around a wax blank. Today I’ve taken some images to walk through the mold making process here at ECU.
With the Iron Pour coming up soon, I’ve had a ton of work to get through to prepare. Today I packed one of my 4 molds, and here’s how we started.
You take your wax blank, the piece you have tirelessly smoothed, shaped, and formed, and attach a sprue system, a series of supports and channels that will allow for a travel route for the molten metal before it reaches the hollow form of the wax in the mold. Also, make sure you attach small unobtrusive channels, called vents, throughout the piece to allow for trapped gas to travel back up to the top of the mold.
Works in Progress
In the past few weeks, I have started a number of projects to the constant growth of my Portfolio. Today i will be sharing a few images of some of my work currently, “In Progress”. (Note: This post will be edited periodically with more images of my works as they develop, so keep your eyes peeled for updates.)
“Here lies a fallen god His fall was not a small one, We did but build his pedestal A narrow and a tall one”- Frank Herbert
Welcome to RLandonPrice.com!
Many thanks to Mandarific, my portfolio website and blog are now up and running. I’ve put a few pieces up for now in the gallery and will be expanding the collection as time goes on – I hope to keep you all up to date with my works in progress as well as completed pieces as this blog progresses. Additionally I will be able to share my personal thoughts and musings, along with show and reception dates, etc.
As for my current projects, I have been working on a casting/stone project and started construction on an ash drawing bench that I hope will lead to more illustration and sketchwork from yours truly.
Please keep checking back often for new work, and feel free to leave comments as you see fit!
- RLP
