Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Lucy the art room dragon

Earlier today (when I was supposed to be completing my requisitions for next year) I started to do a new blog entry all about Lucy, when I discovered that I had already posted her whole history, back in June!! I know many of you were not yet reading my blog back then, but I don't need to re-post the whole story since you can find it, complete with photos, right here: http://plbrown.blogspot.com/2010/06/story-of-lucy-dragon.html. I even mentioned Dan (the Monster Man) Reeder and his book The Simple Screamer in that post! Why didn't I remember that I had written that?
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Sadly, things haven't gone well for Lucy and baby Sparkle. First, I knocked the baby off the shelf where she was sleeping, and she suffered serious damage. She really was just an illusion anyhow. Made out of tiny samples of an air dry clay, she had a head, a tail, and a claw to dig her way out of her shell, but she had no real body; it was all planted into the fuzz in the egg. I was actually most proud of her egg, which was broken on purpose when I created it and still actually seems OK. But the clay claw and tail both broke, so there's not much left to her. I may have to make a new baby.
But Lucy's own problems are worse. Being rather large, she has never really fit ANYWHERE. I have a small Victorian house with little rooms and strange broken up spaces and no place for a 5' dragon with a 5' wingspan, so she has been at school for a few years now. For a while she lived on the floor behind my desk, but she was very inconvenient and intrusive there, and being a klutz I was always tripping over her.
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So then she moved to the top of a cabinet, but I was told she was too close to the ceiling for fire codes and had to be moved lower. Since then she's been on top of a drying rack cabinet. But she's wider than the cabinet so I took off her wings and propped her sideways against the wall.
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Yesterday I decided to take Lucy down for the first time all year, to take some new photos of her. She's gotten quite dusty and because of her rough texture and jewels glued randomly between her scales it's almost impossible to sponge or dust her off. (I tried.) So her rich color and glossy sheen is definitely muted with a year of dust. Ugh.
I tried to put her wings on, and the metal rod that support one wing broke right through it. The wing hung down bumping into Lucy's head. Since the wings are already upside down and backwards anyhow, and were never attached in the correct place on her body to begin with, this just made them look worse :-(
And then I realized that leaning her on her side for so long had seriously warped the 2 legs that had supported her. She used to lie flat on her belly, with her feet and tail also on the ground. Now her front wrist is bent and cocked backwards, so it looks like she is going to awkwardly grab something, and her feet and tail hover slightly above the table surface, looking very awkward.
I wish I had a good end to this story but I really don't know what I'm going to do with Lucy now. She'll probably go back on top of the drying rack for now, but after that - I don't know. The realization is that she is not fixable. So maybe this summer I'll need to try to build another dragon...

4 comments:

  1. Phyl, I was wondering what the story was about the dragon, (I wasn't following your blog in June) thanks for explaining. Great story :) When was she originally made?

    if you have some time, check out my blog: artideasthatgrow.blogspot.com

    Molly

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  2. Hi Phyl,
    You make me smile:)
    Just want to say I love what you commented to Ted on his blog about "lifting everyone's spirits" w/ your ideas to beat the doldrums....I'm going to print it out and put it on my bulletin board b/c I know there are times when I feel exactly what Ted described.
    tisha

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  3. Phyl,

    What will the proper send off for Lucy be??? I think it will make an awesome story. Hope you document it.

    I had the fire marshall bust me too for displays on my shelves. The room looks very boring with no colorful sculptures up there!

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  4. Thanks Tisha, what a sweet comment!

    And Erica, yes, I will document whatever I eventually do, but for now she's hiding under a table (the custodian seems to just sweep around her - oops - though the kids are intrigued) but I expect in a few days I'll be putting her back on top of the drying rack since the damage is already done. I would love some good ideas for what to realistically do with her though.

    Molly, I first began building her in the summer of either 2003 or 2004. I brought her to my art room in the winter and worked on her there, and then back home again in the summer to work on her some more. Because I had to work on her outside, it took a long time. We had one very rainy summer where I didn't get much done. I don't think she actually got her wings until at least 2006, and they remained unattached until the last minute solution that went so wrong. Next time I'll plan better, and if someone offers to help I'll keep a better eye on them! She's been living in the art room since completion.

    ReplyDelete

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