Marie's page

I’ve been stuck for a big part of January thinking how does one approach a contemporary art conservation portfolio, when a friend texted me a picture of a seal-themed lamp, sending me into a three day spiral of buying overpriced polymer clay, acquiring a whole roll of rabbit wire and messing up our living room with oil paint.

My lab supervisor kindly let me spray it with leftover lumiflon coating and use a bunch of material, including celulose acetate foil and botched up samples from our first attempt at doing research for my bachelor thesis (repurposed as fin thorns and scales).

This project was pure joy, one absurd idea fueling the other. Had to make day-long breaks to let the clay dry before painting it, which only made the madness worse. The clay was still damp when I started to paint it, and after using qouache for a part I switched to oil, then added a layer of acrylic glitter paint. At first I was set on going with a fancy adhesive to attach the teeth, ended up using hot glue and then paiting over it. The eyes are decorated with nail polish. It felt like a miracle when I switched the light on for the first time and it still worked.

Anyway, I couldn’t stop smiling throughout the process. It was messy and colorful, sometimes I felt a bit possessed, scouting for random objects to include around the flat. Definitely made one of our very introverted PhDs very suspicious after she entered the lab to the sight of me frantically putting lab material in my tote bag.

I love this one for all of it. This is what and how I want to create, things that are fun and surprising, a bit absurd. I’ve given the fish to my thesis supervisor and he was pleased, it now sits in the lab, greeting visitors.