from the studio: 4.16

between the installation in crawfordsville and the mural in lafayette i've been mostly working on random things.  i was in the middle of working on an assemblage linoprint of the courthouse for an upcoming local show and instead decided i needed to add to the junk village i built last year.  so i made a church with a huge steeple and a courthouse out of stuff lying around the studio.  i finished out the church, but still have many of the details to do on the courthouse.  check out the terrible iPhone photos on my studio floor, tables and shelves.

church and courthouse.  the painting in the background belongs to my mother.
she asked me to rework a boring painting i'd done a long time ago.

the courthouse has mindy's friend's rice cooker and some kind of old oil can for its dome top.  the church is topped with some catholic icon i picked up at an antique shop somewhere some years ago.  it is an interesting process to dig through limited materials lying around the studio and come up with building parts.  some of these things take a while to build because i can't find the right piece.  but eventually i compromise for something that will work and i end up with these absurd looking constructions.  i dress them up with a few stencils and surface treatments.  and gradually i am building an entire village.  these will be included with the larger city block that i built early last month.  

city block i built last month.  this is one side.  it has building fronts on all four sides.

this is all still a very incomplete idea and i still don't know what the hell i'm going to do with these things, but they sure are making a fun little junk village.  the problem is that they are damn big.  and i'm running out of space to store damn big things in my studio.

the church with completed roof and stained glass.  the courthouse is waiting for me to
find some appropriate sized clocks.