Wild Hearts and Grotesque: Quasimodo's Brother

 


Autumn has arrived, the winds have blown the coloured leaves off the trees and the rain has soaked the earth in preparation for the new growth in spring.  Wild hearts prepare for the change in the seasons: warm to cold.  

WILD HEARTS 

This piece was inspired by the song; 'Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken' by Pink.  

What is a wild heart?  It is a free-spirited person who experiences life to the fullest, with all her ( I use the feminine here, because I am female; this can apply to males as well), senses in tact.  She uses them all: touch, smell, hearing, emotions... .  She lives this way on a daily basis, engaging in and with things that pique her curiosity and wonder.  She wonders about how something works, how it feels, how it is made, how it can be and is used.  These experiences are food for her soul which she then interprets through her creativity.  

Wild hearts can be bruised, cracked, pushed to the limit, but a wild heart will not break because it has developed callouses around the bruises.  She mends the cracks with the love she feels for herself giving  her warmth, vulnerability and a strong sense of self-respect and self-worth. 

A wild heart can't be broken because it's always open, to receive, to hear, to feel, and to engage.  Looking into a wild heart's openness is to see her softness, her wishes, and her eternal beauty.  

A wild heart thrives on a wild wind, the intensity of a storm, the density of a forest, the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, a rainbow after the storm.  It is the energy of the natural wildness that feeds her soul, gives her strength, and fuels her self-love.  

Efforts to control a wild heart is like gluing her feet in a pair of shoes nailed to the floor.  To her, it is a slow living death and she slowly puts away all that makes her feel alive and full of joy.  She knows that those who control will never understand what they have lost through their actions.  So in the words of Atticus, 'Love her wild and she will love you'.

I worked on this piece over a three week period, thinking about how to create it, the materials I would need to complete it and the process I would have to take to make sure each step was successful.  


I started making the forms for the hearts with papier mache.  The idea was to stack them on this stand, however, once the pulp was added, the weight wouldn't allow it.  Once the forms were created, I sealed them with varnish to prevent the moisture of the pulp from undoing them.  When the varnish dried, I covered them with paper pulp. 

The pulp consisted of egg carton pulp mixed with wheat paste and egg shells.  I really liked the feel of the texture with the paste.  The forms, covered with pulp, were put in the oven to dry for approximately 2 hours ( a slow roast).  
When cooled, I painted the hearts with a couple coats of gesso and then painted them with acrylic paint.  


I added feathers, egg shells, metal, synthetic gold leaf and chicken wish bones.  I painted the patches of egg shells, blue, inserted feathers and wish bones into the larger heart and feathers into the smaller heart: all the things that make up a wild heart.  


I appliqued paper leaves, from decorative paper, onto two ceramic dishes for the bases of the hearts. 



I re-thought the stand.  I added stone pieces to the base to give it weight and hand wrote a poem from, Love Her Wild, a book of poems by Atticus and inserted it into the stand.  I added two decorative pieces of horse hair and Hanji paper to the outer part of the stand.  




The hearts and appliqued leaves were sealed with an acrylic gloss medium and varnish.  

Measurements

Large heart: 9 x 9 x 5 inches/22.9 x 22.9 x 12.7 cm
Small heart: 8 x 8 x 4 inches/20.3 x 20.3 x 10.2 cm
Ceramic bases: 14.5 x 1 inch/36.8 x 2.5 cm
Stand: 9 x 8 inches/ 22.9 x 20.3 cm
Scroll open: 5.5 x 14 inches/13.9 x 35.6 cm

Materials

paper, metal, feathers, synthetic gold leaf, egg shells, acrylic paint, ceramic, bone 

GROTESQUE, QUASIMODO'S BROTHER

There was some pulp left over from the wild hearts project so I created Grotesque.  


I let this piece air dry. It took about three days to completely dry.  

Once dry, I painted it with a couple of coats of gesso and then covered it with tissue paper, added origami stars, acrylic painted styrofoam eyes with synthetic gems, appliqued leaves from decorative paper and text from a book. 


Since Halloween was right around the corner, I drew influence from the celebration.  This was an exercise in playful fun and experimenting with different materials.  

Measurements

10.5 x 12.5 inches/26.7 x 31.8 cm

Materials

paper, styrofoam, synthetic gems, zircon, tissue paper, paper pulp, egg shells 

Mary 
bbinder999@gmail.com 



















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