Portable Planet Gunsmoke

I did not know whether to put this under "Sculpture" or "Miscellaneous." It's more sculpture than anything else, I suppose.

Remember making dioramas in grade school? This is one of a Gunsmokean landscape! I made it as a cosplay, too. It's wearable!

I took a large piece of styrofoam from packaging...forgot what box it was from - I think my computer monitor. I painted it the color of the desert. I added sand to the wet paint, and sprinkled it atop the acrylic paint while it was wet. It's sand from a real desert - the area around my house!

Underneath is not painted. I scraped out a hollow into which fits a standard bicycle helmet. I strung wires through the thicker parts of the underneath parts of the styrofoam to wire to the helmet.

I glued authentic desert rocks to the structure. I live in southern Arizona. The land around me resembles Planet Gunsmoke very much. I assume that the world has the same kinds of rocks. In the Project SEEDS ep, it was said that the stratum was mostly quartz. Southern Arizona is mostly quartz. There's some granite there, too.

The figures were made from oven bake polymer clay. The Plant structure is made with the same kind of clay, painted with metallic acrylic paints. The stuff sticking out of it, the wires and stuff - are all real wire and rusted metal bits and nails gathered from around my dad's old shed out in my backyard. The Plant itself, is a GE 60 watt lightbulb.

After taking these digital photographs, I wired the thing to my bike helmet and wore it. It's a little awkward... had to hold it up with one hand to keep it from tipping off my head, but... it IS wearable - as long as I'm careful with it.

I hope to premere it at Otakon - if my boyfriend's and my plans go well this summer. I don't know how I'm going to get it on the plane and keep it safe, though. It's fairly fragile.