Friday Egg: Species of Water

Today's piece is called "Species of Water." The blues remind me of the varied shades of blue and green you see in different kinds of water: ocean, lake, ice, deep and shallow. These chicken eggshells were injected with dye and allowed to sit and think for a few days. I then cut teardrop shapes into the eggshells using a diamond wheel on my Dremel. This was definitely the hardest part and I lost about a third of the eggshells that I started with.  I then carefully arranged the eggshells in different configurations until I found the one most pleasing and attached them to the white framework. I love looking at the various colors inside of each eggshell. I find it interesting that some eggs allowed the dye to migrate through the pores to the outer shell while others kept it completely inside.

Just a note: eggshell dust is hazardous to breathe, so if you are ever tempted to cut into an eggshell with a Dremel, use a dustbox or cut outside and wear a paint project respirator with filters for vapor/paint/dust. If you smell eggshell dust then you are breathing it in and you don't want to do that.

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Starry Seas

Friday Egg today is similar to the one I posted a couple of weeks ago, but in a completely different colorway. I like to see how choosing different colors can completely change the feel of a piece. I call this one "Starry Seas" because the eggshell decided that the pores of the egg would show on the open water areas, where I left the wave blank rather than draw stripes. It looks to me like stars in the sky reflected in a wave. I love the effect and I am happy when an eggshell asserts itself like this.

Friday Egg: Fish Traffic

Friday Egg today is a whimsical and bright traditional egg with non-traditional colors. It's on a chicken eggshell, so it fits right in the palm of your hand. I called it "Fish Traffic" because the way I arranged this fish reminded me of two way traffic on a street. 

Friday Egg: Sundown Seas

This Friday egg is called "Sundown Seas" because of the beautiful orange and yellow highlight colors that remind me of a sunset glinting off waves. All I need is a boat and a bottle of bubbly! Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Caught

Planetary objects caught up in an invisible net of gravity. This is a goose egg. I started with a pencilled sketch on the egg, indicating where the circles would be and then where the net would fall. I dyed the egg gray and waxed the net, avoiding the areas where I wanted the net to be a different color, like the black net over the yellow circle below. Then I went through two different yellows and black before etching the eggshell back down to white with vinegar. I like how the etching caused some bleed out from the darker colors into the white areas. You can see the feathering around a black circle in the picture second down from here. It looks a bit like the net and the circle are merging, disintegrating into each other. Not static, nor caught in the net forever!

Friday Egg: Carousel

I'm baaaaaack! It's been a while! I've been out for summer break, traveling and dealing with a house renovation and the nuisances that come with it. But I'm back at the kistka as of Monday and really excited to be working on some new ideas.

This is a chicken eggshell done in bright and festive colors that reminded me of a circus carousel, just like the one we rode this summer at Valley Fair in Minnesota!

Friday Egg: Omphaloskepsis

This one is an unusual piece. Two pieces, actually. Each one is half of the same egg, cut in half and mounted in a frame so that the inside of the eggshell is displayed. 

Most often people see this after an egg is broken, after the worst thing in the world has happened, so they probably are too upset to see how beautiful the inside of the eggshell is. What you are seeing is what happens inside the eggshell when I work on the outside with my dyes and wax. The pores of the shell take the dye in and then it travels through the membrane, reacting to the heat of my hand as it holds the egg.

In order to highlight this beautiful "conversation" between me and the materials, I painted over the pattern I created on the outside of the eggshell with matte black acrylic paint. I want the materials to be the star in this piece.