Wavy Waves

As exploration for my own interpretation of Jell-O Waves I decided to go with seeing what it did in liquid form. I poured out my usual recipe of aqua and green gelatin on big tub lids, the ones that are 4 ft. or even 5 ft. long. (I have a lot of plastic tubs on hand.) After I poured it on, I moved the lid around to let the gelatin flow as it cooled, seeing if I could get some permanent folds and ripples and other liquid forms in the dried form.

It has worked really well, so I made quite a few in several watery shades, and my plan is to glue them together and make a big wave, hopefully cresting or breaking in a fairly realistic way. For now I just have the shapes as they dried, but I plan to wet some of them in places to curve them or nestle them so the colors will add up to new colors as the pieces meld.

Hard to photograph, hard to imagine, but easy to do.

The one shown is about four feet long and is now an element in a different sculpture, but you can see how they look after pouring out several layers of gelatin. The thickness determines the color and that is interesting as well.

When they have dried enough for the edges to lift off, about eight hours or so, I peel them off carefully and flip the pieces over onto a series of glass jugs laid on their sides, or in other words, an undulating glass surface. That lets the wave pieces dip and swell and get out of a flat plane. The results of that part have been very satisfying. The edges curl and scallop themselves much like the leaf and flower pieces do, but on a bigger scale. A couple of the pieces will make super elegant wave hats, perhaps.

Next I have to come up with a t-shirt design concept. I found the lettering I want to use, but the graphic is still elusive. I like to let my visual mind ruminate over the course of a few weeks to see what I run into, think about, or decide works for me in the format I want to use. I prefer to make handmade art for the shirts, and do it the old-school way of taking a drawing to screens to prints with nothing more than a copy machine and my skills. It sounds hard but I've done it so many times it's more fun than work. I'm trying to hold onto that attitude as much as possible with the Jell-O Art Show. Make some fun!

Oh, and here is the poster! Big thanks to Jacque Klas for great design!!