Kidney Picture Frame :)

I have run through hundreds of ideas for this project some amazing some not so good but all were mostly adventurous. I bought many different kinds of materials and tested them to see if they would work for what I want to achieve and ran into some difficulties (lets just say it involved spray insulation foam which is an awesome material but if you get it on your skin it wont come off without a fight!) So I decided to just sit down with a pencil and paper and write down different body parts that had significance to me and how I could represent that significance in my sculpture. I had just gotten off the phone with my Dad when it hit me...I will do a kidney! My father was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer) last summer when they found a softball sized tumor in his kidney. The findings were completely unexpected as he was at the time a healthy 46 year old man just getting a CT scan ordered by his doctor in a typical physical. He had his kidney removed within a few months and is cancer-free today but I never will forget those months of anguish and fear that he might be taken by cancer at such a young age. My father is a motivating force in my life and I cant imagine what my life would be like without him.

So I am going to make a kidney but when searching through photos of kidneys I discovered the hidden beauty that lies within the cross-section (as if you cut the kidney in half exposing what is inside.) I wanted to incorporate my father somehow and I think I am going to also make the kidney a picture frame and place a photo of my father inside of it. So when you look at the sculpture initally it looks like an anatomical model and when turned around it is a picture frame....

Materials:

Clay (air dry)

knife : to shape clay

Plastic Tubing

Red/Salmon/Royal Blue/ Eggplant/ Black/ White acrylic paints

Paint brushes (various sizes)

Medium sized picture frame (perhaps plain vs. ornate..)

Photo of my father

blankets: to cover ground to prevent mess!

I am not 100% certain of the finishing details..since it is a picture frame I was thinking of making it more decorated with the use of colored beads that I could use in certain parts of the kidney... I am inspired by Liza Lou's work with beads and would love to emulate that somehow in this piece!

Liza Lou's beaded kitchen:

PROCESS:

I hope to use the existing picture frame as my base and then use clay to build off of it to create my kidney shape. Then I will make a flat surface (on the non-photo side) and use smaller bits of clay to create a realistic texture. I will then paint the entire thing using acrylic paints and add some beaded details to the finished product...

Wish me luck!

P.S

Liza Lou has some work with the body as well... it is pretty amazing.. Google it!