King of the Clowns

 This first image is of the clown ornaments I have been working on for the Art Institute of Boston's Re:Fresh Illustration showcase. We have created a pop-up shop pop-up gallery for our senior show. These ornaments are up for sale! Over the past year I have been very interested in clowns and the ideas surrounding them. The stuffed guy on the pedestal is the first clown I ever made and is where this exploration began. The previous post goes a little more in depth about why I find clowns so fascinating.

Masks

Masks are used to enhance, conceal, and or transform; they can manifest many a facade, be it beautiful, terrifying, and or deceiving. While exploring the concept of masks I became very interested in clowns and began to interpret their symbolism in context to society and to my own experience. Clowns have an interesting dichotomy - they are associated with jokes and laughter, yet many people find them eerie or horrifying. The nature of this exploration is simultaneously pleasing to the eye and yet uncomfortable, with dark undertones challenging the aesthetic. These masks are presented in a formal way any posses a duality that is ultimately silly in nature but complicated in concept and approach. Similar themes are prevalent throughout my work. At first glance the work is endearing and sometimes even adorable, yet upon second look, the viewer is challenged with an aftermath of something “creepy.”




These are clown masks I made for a site specific gallery space, The Blue Door Project, in downtown Roxbury MA. A few friends and I helped to clean up and convert an old hallway into a gallery space.
I made these masks and never envisioned them living inside painted frames, but I am really happy with how they came out.

Butterfly: A stop-motion in the making

 These puppets are being created as mock characters for a stop motion I am planning on shooting next year. It is about a story I wrote based on my childhood. The main character is a set of conjoined twins modeled after my twin sister and I. The mother character is modeled after my late mother. I am in the works of creating a process book right now and trying to raise money to fund the project. Here are some process pictures of my puppets and some set ideas I have been thinking about

The Mystery of Life and Health

I have been taking an alternative medicine class and for my final paper instead of going in depth with a certain method of alternative healing, I chose to use narrative therapy and develop stories around different modalities in order to help me further understand how different people around the world live and heal.

The thought that people live on one earth but live in their own worlds and believe in such different things; is there a right and wrong way to life and heal?

The Circus has come to town!!!

So this is my final version for this month's Laika competition and also the final for my 3-D concepts class. I was having trouble with the colors and composition, but I worked out a lot of the kinks and am very pleased with the final outcome. I have also learned that I am not great at sewing stuffed animals and that making your own pattern is a big challenge. All in all it was a great learning experience and I always love to experiment with using type, photography, and illustration all in one piece. Below are my two previous versions with many color ways in between. I think that there show a bit of my progress.

The concept behind this piece was to make a self portrait of me and my twin sister for a present. I adapted it to my 3-D concepts assignment of creating a piece based on a circus theme with a wonky perspective. The theme for the monthly challenge that Laika holds was cute michiveous circus animal so that is where the elephant came from. He is my favorite puppet I have made so far. I really had a lot of fun with this. I am bad at giving my characters a likeness to real people, but it is something I am working on. Even though it doesn't resemble my sister and I, I think it expressed our personalities. We are inseparable circus freaks.

I started with just the image of the girls and the elephant, but I was bored with it and decided to add an audience. I was browsing the internet and had come across some old circus posters. They were so beautifully designed, and so I decided that is what my image needed. So my final piece is trying emulate the style of old side show circus posters.

 This is a shot of the elephant. His detail is not very prominent in my final poster so I wanted to give him his own close up. This was very challenging and I am not sure if I will take this on again anytime soon, but it was a good experience working with making my own pattern and learning how to sew properly. He is not very symmetrical and things are a little off, but I think that just give him more of a charm and that hand made feel.

Also if anyone is interested, this is the poem I have written along with my poster. It is a little cheesy, but I written a short story for my last submission, so I wanted to try my hand at a poem this time around.

The doctor looked puzzled, he hadn’t a clue,
She had not one child, but two!
She was in labor for what seemed like forever,
then out they came, two children stuck together!
They were called mutants, aliens, deranged,
But to their mother they were far from strange.
She saw this as a gift from above,
One child to watch, but two to love.
As they grew, people stared and kids were mean,
But they ignored this, for these girls had a dream!
The circus is where they were destined to be,
Graceful and skilled for the world to see!
The girls auditioned when they were of age,
got hired, and instantly took to the stage.
The crowd, they cheer and they scream,
Amazing! Astounding! What a team!
One in black, and one in white,
One like day, and one like night,
Twice the heart and twice the soul,
two legs, two arms, they make a whole.
They were happy as could be,
but there was something they did not see.
They did not see it from their elephant’s point of view,
Who has been fed up since their big debut.
Back in India, he had a great life,
he missed his home, his kids, his wife.
He began to devise a plan to escape this place,
Sabotage their act, and be gone without a trace.
He would pull the feather from his cap,
Use it to tickle the girls while they were in his trap!
They would be be thrown off balance and tumble,
The crowd would boo and mumble.
They would all get fired,
And then he would be free, as he desired!
Unfortunately he was too small,
His trunk was to short, and the girls were to tall.
His plan was to sabotage the act and get the boot,
instead, they saw him waving the feather, and thought it was cute.
The elephant was mad, how could this be?
All he wanted was to be free.
The poor elephant in dismay,
Would think of a fool-proof plan one day.

The Inventor

 My new look ;)

Below on the right is a process shot of the inventor when I was sewing his clothes and fixing his hair. And on the left is his temporary home :) I have a little show set up on the 2nd floor of the 700 AIB building on Beacon street.

 This was my first photograph of the inventor. I love the light and many other things about this photo. Unfortunately when this image is blown up it is blurry and does not capture the crispness of the 3-dimentional objects I spent so much time making. I thought it just didn't do justice to my creation.

 

So this is my second shot, and my submission for 3x3 competition!! Deadline was today, wish me luck :) <3

Unlucky Lephrechaun

Not many process shots of me sculpting this time, but these are some shots of how I painted this puppet. I am moving away from flat colors and experimenting with brush strokes and color mixing techniques.

 My little guy all ready for his big shoot!!!

 and this is me...... looking good??

Final image, first place in Laika's creative monthly challenge for March; theme is Unlucky Leprechaun

 

An Unlucky Leprechaun
by: Kristin Musser
And old man observes his wiry hair in the dirty bathroom mirror. He chuckles as he observes the little hairs weaving in and out of each other going any which way they desire. Combing it a little more than usual today, he smiles. Today is Saint Patrick’s Day, and since the old man is Irish to the bone, this is one of his favorite holidays. He always wears this silly Leprechaun costume his wife had crafted for him many years ago. She passed away, but even though he has put on some weight and out grown the costume quite a bit he enjoys the way it feels against his skin, it feels like the first time he tried it on. He recalls seeing his wife’s thrilled expression and her proud grin as she admired the ghastly costume hanging on his once slender figure. He saw how happy she was and didn’t have the heart to express his true feelings about the costume. But year after year, in her memory, he wears that costume on March 17th; from the green now-faded top hat all the way down to those leather shoes with now-tarnished buckles. Fixing himself as best he can, he walks out into the day light to watch the parade and enjoy the smiling faces of the children who are always so excited to see a real Leprechaun. As he walks along the side walk, in his bitter-sweet day dream, he tries his best to have his foggy memory relive those days when his wife would be walking beside him. His reverie is suddenly interrupted as a stranger yanks his fragile bones into an alley. The stranger is a tall, thin man with the thick scent of alcohol hanging on his breath. Bewildered by this sudden event, all the old man can do is stare, frozen in fear. The stranger, slurring, demands a pot of gold. The old man, now laughing, clearly, thinking to himself, this must be a joke. The laughter further agitates the drunken man, and once again he demands that the old man lead him to his gold. He went on to explain that once you catch a Leprechaun the captor becomes extremely lucky and the Leprechaun must then lead them to his gold. The old man panics and begins to lead the drunken man down the alley way playing along in order to buy himself time to plan an escape. As he begins to run, the age in his bones hinders his once agile abilities. Struggling to escape his pursuer, he sees a fence in sight and decides to jump it like he did when he was a mischievous teenager. As soon as his opportunity arose to jump, his wrinkled fingertips barely brushed the cold metal of the chain link fence before he felt a firm hand on his shoulder that swiped him out of the air, slamming him down to the ground. Warm blood pooling beside him, he looks up into the tall man’s crazed eyes and knows what was coming next.
The old man died because someone’s obscure view of obtaining wealth and luck. The word luck in itself is an ambiguous concept, luck is neither tangible or measurable, yet it is something everyone desires. In order to obtain wealth and in order to obtain this imagined concept of luck, this crazed man, over come with greed, killed an innocent man because he did not receive the riches and luck he had demanded. To this old man his costume gave him a sense of nostalgia and helped him to remember his beautiful wife, but to the crazed drunken murderer this costume was a representation of a get rich quick scheme. The drunken man desired luck and wealth, and was so angry when he wasn’t simply handed these things that he was mad enough to chase down an elderly man and kill him in cold blood.