Yes! I do take commissions! For anyone interested in a custom book sculpture light or any other sculpture project, you can reach out to me here via email, or contact me through Instagram or Facebook to discuss them!
-About this project-
Well, if you want the nutshell story, I ripped paper, glued it to metal & plastic, cried a little, laughed a lot & created a 7 & 1/2ft book dragon. Voila!
If you want the true story, grab your favorite cuppa & settle in for a short tale of behind-the-scenes adventure...
I began sculpting with books around 2013 when I first saw one of Malena Valcarcel's pieces- she's a fabulous paper artist in Spain.
She creates tiny figurines & whimsical scenes with books & for some of them adds a single tiny LED light to accent some of her sculptures. I was in love instantly. She is a fellow artist I can truly say changed my life through her work & made me see outside of the proverbial art box.
I grew up in a small electrical business household... Lighting has been a major factor in my life, so I've always been a bit... "thorough" on how I go about adding light & special effects to my projects.
I love creating things that inspire people to stop in their tracks & begin their sentences with "WHAT THE..."
It brings me an inexplicable amount of joy to exceed expectations & push boundaries in the direction of the NEW.
When I met Kim Hubbard, owner of K2 Studios (which was a longer, magical story of its own), we hit it off immediately. She shared with me that she had always designed her window displays herself, but for the first time in 30 years, she wanted to take a little break. So she offered me the honor of designing & creating the window for her for the fall & winter season.
Those who are already familiar with my work know that the genre closest to my heart is in the mindscape of the magical & mythological. I've made that my specialty over the years.
So when most people are thinking pumpkins & reindeer for fall & winter.. I... am not. Frankly the Christmas montage of the same overplayed characters, colors & songs every single year from the first of September to the end of January makes me cringe. Don't get me started on the psychopaths that celebrate "Christmas in July". How about Halloween in June?! ~Monsters & Werewolves in swimsuits eating ice cream. Where's THAT holiday?
Anyway, I constantly crave different & innovative. "What has NOT been done yet"? And what would be Truly Fun to make where I wouldn't just be dragging my feet hoping the project would somehow manifest itself without my involvement, like 10th grade math homework?
Well, I do love Dragons!
And to the best of my knowledge, an unreasonably gigantic dragon made of book pages hasn't come across my radar yet...
Due to previous experience in creating a castle for a child's birthday, only to find a dirty swear word on the side of a turret moments before delivery (teachable moment), I have made a very conscious decision to sculpt with family-friendly stories for projects that are to be introduced publicly. Most children's books have thick pages with illustrations on them- not good for creating luminaries. I need more of a simplistic base to allow the right amount of translucency that will also provide balance & not over-distract from the sculpture itself.
Harry Potter is one of my personal favorites, & in my opinion, a perfect fit for a magical dragon emerging from a book suspended in mid air!
For my Asheville debut as an artist, I wanted to bring something with serious impact.
I presented this concept to Kim, and she not only didn't flinch, she gave me the green light! ...And a REALLY tight deadline. My last giant dragon in NY took me 6 months to complete.
But! As long as I have coffee & chocolate, I never back down from an unrealistic challenge. Pffft. BRING IT...& fire up the coffee pot!
I immediately went to work using painters tape to map out the floor of the condo I share with my godsend of a partner, Joe Richichi. He is also an artist- a wildlife illustrator, and a veterinarian.
And he is also a man with tools that I do not have.
So we embarked on an exciting quest to Lowes to gather supplies. I enlisted him to do "man things"- screw flanges to wood & structure PVC pipes to contour my hairbrained plans. (Yes, of course I could do those things myself, but let's be honest, ladies, aren't guys just so damn handsome when they're being handy? He loads the dishwasher -my heart races & my eyes glaze over.)
Anyway...
Once the base was set, I took my favorite sculpture materials & grafted the dragon's body onto the hurricane-sturdy structure that Joe built.
I worked all day.
Joe arrived home from saving animals' lives to see me gleefully proud of the disaster of craft supplies I had created scattered amid the living room & the gigantic dragon form I had constructed in his absence... He hugged me in congratulations & then winced with concerned condolence...
"Honey, this is AMAZING.... But... do you think it's going to fit OUT our door?"
F***.
Nope! Sure WON'T!!
And so, began the next full day of dragon decapitation & re-engineering. Perhaps somewhere deep inside, I was feeling inadequate compared to Joe & his medical degree & subconsciously needed to prove that I, too, could ALSO perform surgery... On Mythological beings. (That should give me extra Mic-Drop points somehow, but I really couldn't say for sure because mine doesn't bleed & I wouldn't be sued if I accidentally reattached it backwards).
Who knows.
Either way, about 12 homemade "Levity" iced lattes from Cooperative Coffee Roasters (Thanks SO much Eli, Matt & Hannah!!) & far too many chocolate chip cookies to shamefully admit to, publicly, this unexpected re-engineering task was successful & I was on to the next most tedious & delightfully rewarding phase; scaling.
When people ask me "How long did that take you" I literally cannot translate & relay that question into a normal-person quantifiable time format.
What I CAN tell you is that I ate an obscene amount of Trader Joe's Butter Chicken, demolished a 2lb bag of Levity coffee & made it to season 6 of the X-Files with only two teary-eyed stress melt downs.
That's how long it took.
I had less than 8 weeks to pull this off, & somehow, magically I did. -With the most incredible support from my Joe, every step of the way.
I cut up 3 full Harry Potter books & hand ripped & folded Every. Single. Scale. There seemed to be thousands. As clinically insane as I may currently appear to all of you at this very juncture, NO; I did not count them.
I wanted the dragon to have every detail highlighted, & neither my artistic OCD nor my morals would let me take an easy way out. So, when Joe asked me if I needed anything on his way back home from work one day, I sent him unarmed into unfamiliar waters to the make-up section at Wal-Mart. He found a Loreal dark bronzing compact & proceeded to get reprimanded at the wrong checkout because he wasn't suppose to leave the gated make-up community without paying for his glorious prize first.(Another teachable moment).
Why not Maybelline? Why Loreal?
Because she wasn't born with it, but She's Worth It. (Yeah, I did. Not apologizing.)
Upon returning home valiantly, he was awarded big hugs & butter chicken. Yes, again. Don't judge.
I then used the sponge applicator on the scales to hand edge every damn one of those suckers, one at a time.
Each was then individually applied with glue & once they were all in place, I used my air brush machine to contour & add depth.
Amid the time restraints & stress, for the first time in my life, I handed over part of one of my projects to another adequately skilled artist... To be honest, it hurt a little. I'm a complete control freak over my work, but I'm learning to calm down a tiny bit & open up to collaborate.
I described the style of eye I wanted for the dragon, & then Joe whipped it up with his expertise in incredible detail using colored pencils. I then crafted a 3D pupil from clay that matched & we installed the combo in resin. Joe helped me punch hundreds of stars, that were installed cascading out of the suspended book amid fairy lights.
Aforementioned lighting freak that I am, I also installed flame simulation LEDs behind her eyes to give that extra special detail. lastly, I gilded her in gold leaf details as the finishing touch.
After my sweet Joe went to 4 different U-Haul locations to find an available truck, we hustled to deliver her in the dark on a Saturday night in downtown Asheville, which was SO much fun & a really wise choice. (Teachable moment number 37 on this project).
But once we got her in place & saw Kim's reaction... It was all worth it.
One of my favorite parts was sitting in our vehicle alongside the road, watching pedestrians literally stop dead in their tracks...
I'm going to sound like a Dateline predator, but I love watching the reactions of people from the background without anyone knowing who I am or that I was a part of it when I'm right beside them. That's as far as I take my voyeurism, I swear. But there is an unmatched delight in that experience.
Seeing first-hand that what I've created is making people genuinely happy- even if for a moment. And knowing that they're not putting on an exaggerated show for me with their reaction... Plus the ease in being able to quietly vanish without having to explain how many episodes of The X-Files it took, or being made to feel guilty over how many times I've eaten butter chicken in a 2 month span... There's a sick thrill & unadulterated freedom in that, that I simply adore.
My ultimate goal in launching this project is a long-term one. I love working with authors to help create custom pieces. And I'd love the opportunity to create for major book stores, museums, for set designs, etc.
Ultimately, though, I'm working toward one day having my own little world in the woods beside Joe, to host authors, artists & creatives & teach classes that fuse Arts with Metaphysics. That's where my heart will be.
But for now, the story is unfolding amid ripped & tattered pages, in a most Extraordinary way.
I am Profoundly Grateful.
A Tremendous Thank You goes to my Joe, who was at my side creating with me, telling endless jokes, & warming and refilling both my coffee and my soul. He is also the magician that manifested this incredible website for me. I am Beyond Words Grateful to him.
A Heartfelt Thank You to Kim Hubbard for fully trusting a strange girl that appeared & ascended her staircase with her intuition... It is an honor to have been asked to create for your magical shop! Thank You for allowing me such a Spectacular debut in Asheville to showcase my work!
EPIC Credit goes to Kim Hubbard, Nicole Gianturco, & the K2 team for creating the most SPECTACULAR chaotic library background for this piece!!
All of these wonderful people are works of art in motion, both inside as well as what they command in the 3D.
I am honored to be alongside them.
To see the Amazing illustrations of Joe Richichi, DVM, you can find him @ DrawingsByJoe.com
Nicole Gianturco's interior decor services can be found @ Aplombperspective.com
The Fantastical Malena Valcarcel's work that inspired me so long ago, can be found here! (https://www.etsy.com/shop/MalenaValcarcel)
& To grab yourself one of the greatest coffees from Asheville NC, Cooperativecoffeeroasters.com
