Thursday, June 23, 2011

On the Road to Find Out

Hello Gelophiles,

A lot has happened with gelatin over the past four years; previously no one was really doing anything with it. Very rarely in life have I been ahead of a trend, but I think with Jello I was-all thanks to my friend Michelle. But I do believe that ideas are like children, precious... precious children. They need love to grow.

Ok, not really. I think ideas are more like the satan spawn from "Rosemary's Baby". A lot of people are conspiring to get them born and if you're aren't the birthing vehicle someone else will be. So if you're picked, best to lay everything else aside and go full esteem ahead. I mean at least Mai Farrow lived. That poor other girl.... not so much.

So I'm on the road to New York City for the Jell-O Mold competition hosted by Gowanus Studios. A whole competition. And the 3r d annual at that. I set the goal for myself to make a mold out of a bust I had of Barack Obama. And ladies and gentelmen... it worked!

On Friday I spent a few hours at Stony Brook Arts Center and learned heaps from Ben and Kevin about mold making. My expertise has significantly increased and I now something about vaccuum forming plastics. But more on that at another time. For now I am sticking with food safe platinum cured silicone rubber. (Wow that's a fingerfull to type). It's expensive stuff but it works really well if you are only making one ore two molds of something.

At Stony Brook, I made a box out of foam core and hot glue. Everything that I could do wrong I did. But learning should be just that. Make mistake...learn from it. We mixed up the material and degassed. The amount of air bubbles that came out of the liquid silicone was amazing.


My first mold (shown below) did not get degassed and it's riddles with tiny bubbles. However these tiny bubbled neither made me feel happy nor fine.


With Obama mold 2.0 there were absosmurfly no bubbles in it! I may have weird hobbies, or low expectations in life. but upon seeing this machine in operation, I was excstatic! Vacuum degassing chamber...where have you been all my life?!

Now I have the perfect bubble free mold, check it out below. So now I have wo molds to take to New York. One good but the new one even gooder. I'll post more about the process but right now I'm feeling a little carsick on the bus and need to not be staring at a computer screen.


More later.

No comments: