Jellescalation

The Jell-O-scape in my house took a turn toward the serious this week as I fielded a request from a reporter from the Oregonian who wants to do a feature. Initially I was horrified at the idea of letting a camera into my space but gradually I realized that it is the easiest of the many choices for getting a video of my techniques.

So I launched into a whirlwind of moving things around and decided that I can make it look okay in the kitchen and can make a couple of pieces, at least partially, as I did last year in my workshop. I started trying to pin down in hours the kind of prep I will need to do to get the several stages of gelatin demonstrated well enough to show the artistry of the medium.

I can flip it over at anywhere from 3 to 6 hours and get pretty good results at getting it out of the dishes and into the next phase of drying. At overnight, or 12 to 18 hours, it mostly comes out of the dishes and sometimes frees itself as it shrinks. That's about as close as I can get. I just remembered I used a little crockpot last year to keep the molten gelatin warm so I didn't have to constantly stop to microwave it as it jelled too much to work with it. Good detail to remember. I had to clean the stove anyway though, as it was a mess of neglect, and I should probably remove my toaster oven from the kitchen on general principles because that is something I rarely if ever clean beyond taking out the crumbs in the bottom tray. It looks unsafe. Lots of my life does when I try to picture it in the Oregonian.

I moved my office off my kitchen table and now it is just Jell-O, with many pieces in various stages of production. I have one crown made and two others kind of planned. Some will be wearable and some won't, and I'm not all the way sure what I will be wearing in the show or just displaying. I always think I should wear Jell-O throughout the whole show, performance and all, but it usually happens that something breaks or is too unwieldy to dance and sing in, so that's kind of a later-in-the-process

decision.

Jell-O Art does not photograph well, maybe partly because the viewer doesn't have context...nothing about it really resembles natural objects people are used to seeing. It's usually made to view from at least several perspectives, which you can't do that well without a light box and lots of preparation. But here are some bad photos for you.

The golden thing is an actual head-sized mold I covered with flowers for the 30th show, but I couldn't get the flowers to stay on so I finally resorted to tape. It looks amazing in person but is too fragile to wear. The green and peach crown is way more beautiful when worn...I'll probably wear it during part of the show at least, although since I have a new purple and blue apron I'm making a purple one. The crest thing is probably going on that. All of the other things are just pieces that have not experienced their magical transformation yet.
And on the subject of transformations, the last photos are of a cathartic Jell-O piece I made to work through a personal situation of disappointment. It was super effective and I loved the whole process but a loaf of bread fell down on it the next
day so I get to make it again. I have some ideas...