i wrote a poem - for now, untitled.

last night i sank through the pupils of my eyes
giving rise to a rapid black ocean
a massive sea of compulsion
washing over mankind
with one arm i swam to the bow of the sky
then descended back into my mind
to conquer the stage where the animal's confined

too big to escape to small to restrain
i swim in its mouth it flies in my cage

Monster Carnival Light Painting @ the lost horizons night market

A couple images from the light painting photo booth we created in the back of a 14ft box truck. I put this together for the lost horizons night market in collaboration with daniel olshansky, galya kovalyova, and lara agulto

Full gallery can be viewed here: http://lightpaintingphotobooth.tumblr.com/

Paper Mache masks / props created by me and Daniel Olshanskly.

Photos by Galya Kovalyova

my chair in a magazine

some poor shirtless boy clearly fell ill while sitting in my metal chair on this photoshoot for Essential Homme magazine. i wonder if that other boy is going to help him or just stare at the floor and walk around dragging that blanket - i think we all know the answer to this.


photo by matthew lyn

Re-Claimed Redwood Cabinet

Made of re-claimed redwood from a water tower in brooklyn - I milled and constructed this cabinet from scratch to use in my kitchen.

end grain chopping board !

I made myself an end grain chopping board out of Purple Heart and Hard Maple! Its sexy and smooth and the beginning of my woodworking advenures :)

commissioned copper bunny necklace

I was commissioned to make a copper necklace for a friends girlfriend recently, based on a drawing that she does.

The piece before etching and finishing.


Here is the original drawing and finished piece, as compiled and sent to me by the client.

Bravo's Andy Cohen show features my class at 3rd Ward

The Video.

metallic rabbit mask - made in collaboration with daniel olshansky

city of my mind

a drawing i started while on vacation - i plan to take some of these elements and turn them into various pieces in wood and metal.

le la lady

from my notebook

started new chair

well, i woke up in kind of a bad mood, and with a cold. i thought maybe i should stay home and hide out, but instead i went to the metal shop and cut metal and welded for 7 hours. now i have a new chair.

i mostly started creating this for a tufted velvet green cushion i made... but then i accidentally burnt the cushion in the metal shop while fitting it today. this kind of bothered me for like 5 minutes, and then i got over it and continued with the chair. the back of the chair will be etched copper flashing, behind the steel, fastened with rivets. i may run some copper in the linear lines on the bottom as well.

occupy space girls

my mask made it to the moon! this is big time.

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i think this is a good look for me

New Paper Mache pieces, Bravo Shoot

Photos of new work and set photos from the Bravo shoot. Photography by Liz Tormes

A new rabbit mask/head - painted by Daniel Olshansky.



the cat mask was made by one of my amazing students - Erina Hattori. the owl was painted by Daniel Olshansky. the lightning bolt is fun to carry around and attack people with.




a nice photo of attack mountain.

BRAVO SHOOT

Yesterday, BRAVO filmed me teaching my 3rd Ward class 'Extreme Paper Mache Sculpture' with Andy Cohen. I've been tasked with making a bizarre paper mache wig for one of the housewives of Beverly Hills. I'm gonna make it super weird and fun.



The creature was repainted 'Blood Orange' for the shoot, and is currently living in the 3rd Ward display window at the entrance. But this home is temporary... i need to find another home for this guy soon.

photo by liz clayman

chasing and repousse

i made this tonight

thunderstorm!

a few days ago i carved this from a cuttlefish bone and cast it in pewter. i cleaned up the edges but decided to leave the rough texture

upholstering and tufting

This seat is not finished but so far its been upholstered, covered in green velvet, tufted, and i've given it a sexy tack border around the bottom edge. I'll be making legs for it... but have not decided on a design.

trying out wood carving

Recently I took a hand joinery class and started playing with chisels.... this is a scrap piece of redwood from a cabinet i'm building that looks like an old theater stage. I've never carved from wood before... but i'm liking this and feeling comfortable with the chisel, and i'm thinking to integrate this kind of relief carving into the cabinet i'm building.

Double Unicorn Mask - clay model

my Interview with 22 Magazine

http://the22magazine.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/an-interview-with-launa-eddy/

AN INTERVIEW WITH LAUNA EDDY.
September 1, 2011, 3:39 pm

Launa Eddy is a sculptor and jewelry maker living in Brooklyn. We were introduced to her via 3rd Ward and inspired by her collabs with Daniel Olshansky, Dinosaur Feathers, and most of all her interesting background. We asked her to elaborate on her timber wolf/lobster-catching youth and tell about some of her current work.

The 22 Magazine: Can you tell me a little about where you are from in Rhode Island, working on a lobster boat and about raising timber wolves ?

Launa Eddy: We lived in Richmond until I was ten, when the state of Rhode Island told us we couldn’t have wolves and gave us an ultimatum – get rid of them, or move out. So we moved to New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state – my dad continued to run [his] lobster boat between Rhode Island and New Hampshire. While in Rhode Island I spent most of my time off of Point Judith in Narraganset, where most of my family worked as commercial fishermen/women. I spent a lot of time on the boats and the docks growing up – and I actually started working on my father’s boat when I was around eight or nine years old. I would go out with them on fishing trips in the summer and I was their ‘bander’ – I put the rubber bands on the lobster claws and prepped them to be put in the storage tanks on the boat. It was a hard job and being out at sea for three days in all sorts of weather was intense, and eventually when I was sixteen I decided I wasn’t up for the job anymore… mostly because I was prone to sea sickness.When I wasn’t working on the boat, I was often trying to catch fish on the docks, and occasionally I got together with the other fisherman’s kids and we did silly things like arrange lobster and crab races. We’d gamble for curiosities we found on our families boats. Starfish, shells, weird creatures. Everyone would bring a box of things they found and put it in the pot for whoever won the race. As you can imagine, lobsters don’t race very well, and crabs are insane and run all over the place, so it was all very silly. The wolves were pure bred Alaskan timber wolves – my father went to Alaska for a trip to meet a painter who also ran a wolf rescue, and came back with two wolf pups. We named them Sinbad and Sheba, and built them an eight foot tall cage twice the size of our house (it was pretty much a caged off section of forest) and a sweet little dog house inside of it with two stories and Plexiglas windows and a ramp so they could chill on the roof. They had it good.

The 22 Magazine: How do you feel your immersion in lobster catching and wolf raising has effected your work?

Launa Eddy: The ocean is a creepy place. On my fathers lobster boat I’d often feel like I was floating on top of some terrifying alien world – I felt like we were sea astronauts, exploring the darkness below us and kind of like we were operating one of those stuffed animal toy claw machines where you put in your dollar and hope you get the teddy bear you’re aiming for. Except this machine had some bizarre stuff and it was my job to make sure the animals were restrained so they didn’t destroy each other. Growing up floating on top of this environment part-time, then raising wolves in the woods the rest of the time, certainly effected my life and my work. There are these bizarre creatures and this kind of darkness that I like to mingle with, but then also bring it to a place that is kind of cute and amusing because the more extreme something is, I think the funnier it becomes.

The 22 Magazine: Did you study anywhere or are you self-taught?

Launa Eddy: I studied Anthropology and Archaeology at Franklin Pierce College in Ridge, New Hampshire and also graduated with a minor in creative writing, and studied glass blowing. I had been emancipated and living on my own since the age of sixteen, so I was putting myself through college and surviving off of grants and scholarships mostly, and being that I only had myself to rely on, I thought I didn’t have much of a chance at supporting myself as a visual artist. At the time I thought I might want to be a writer or ethnographer or humanitarian of sorts – and I thought studying people, culture, history and politics would help me understand the world better, and would make me a better writer. When I graduated I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so I moved to NYC to apprentice for an inventor and glass engraver in Long Island, and from there on out I started teaching myself to make things. It has been an epic journey to say the least.

The 22 Magazine: When did you first get interested in papier-mache and what about it appeals to you as a medium?

Launa Eddy: My friends and I established a group called The Compound Eye and together we started working with papier-mache - we shot short films and sketches and worked on projects together. We started making props and costumes to use in our shorts and sketches – and then from there other people asked us to make them things, and it just kept going. Papier-mache is amazing – it’s a versatile medium that is relatively light weight, as well as environmentally and economically friendly. Honestly I started making things from papier-mache because I wanted to bring to life my ideas, and I didn’t have any money to throw around. I was barely getting by and I wanted to create. It can also be a great social medium, I like working together with other people or arranging crafting nights where we put on some good music and have some wine and make amazing things.

The 22 Magazine: You’ve recently branched out to metal sculpture, which is an off-shoot of your jewelry making as well. Any future plans for projects or are you just playing it by ear?

Launa Eddy: I will certainly keep working in metal – I love the permanence of it, and making things that people can interact with. I plan to shift some of my focus onto creating furniture pieces that are more sculptural and surrealist, but at the same time, I don’t want to make this my only art form because quite frankly I’m afraid of losing my fingers. For now, I’m just playing it by ear, taking projects that I like that come my way, and do what I want. I plan to do more jewelry and hopefully some more stop motion animation in the near future as well.

The 22 Magazine: A lot of your work seems really based in humor and is really fun. What would you say to those that suggest art is not a humorous medium, but in fact should be taken very seriously?

Launa Eddy: People who say that art should exclusively be taken seriously and isn’t a lighthearted medium are interesting, and works of art themselves; they are amusing… so in a sense they kind of become what they reject as hilarious and interesting characters in this bizarre world.

My artist profile from 3rd Ward !

3rd Ward created this artist profile for me :) it was shot, produced, and edited by Christian Schneider. I put together the Stop Animation

July...

This summer has been pretty intense. I haven't really had the time or focus to sit down and document anything in the last month or so. But in between all the insanity of work and art and life i've done a few doodles =

this is a design for a small side table to go along with my chair - i started building it but its looking like i wont have time to really get into it until september or october.

chair dentata completed

the chair monster lives and has been set loose in brooklyn. i have many more crazy chair sketches in my notebook and i think this is the start of a beautiful romance with sheet metal and angle grinders.

snails = never again

I found this snail crossing a sidewalk in florida, and filmed it. I'd say this is slow and short on surprises but kind of beautiful and intoxicating at the same time. I'm also compelled to mention that I had eaten escargot earlier that day and when i found this guy crossing the street i felt like some kind of terrible monster all of a sudden, and also i felt a little gross.

Cubist / LSD Jagger

I had fun making this one. I think I will make it a pin.

A Foxy Raccoon

The fox-oon lives! I sculpted the head from wax and then cut out and soldered in tiny tiny leetle teeth.

these eyes and that lady

These were sculpted from soft wax and cast in bronze.

I sculpted the eyeballs with sculpty and hand painted them, then I applied two patinas on the bronze - liver of sulfer and a green patina.




This was my first ever attempt at figure sculpting, believe it or not. I thought I'd try something a little more classic.

Teaching Sculpture at 3rd Ward - Sign up!

photo by Adam Courtney

I'm teaching Paper Mache Sculpture at 3rd ward in July - follow this link to sign up!

http://www.3rdward.com/3rdwardclasses/extreme-paper-mache-sculpture.html

Paper Mache is an extremely versatile art-form that is also Eco-friendly and affordable. Masks, puppets, sculptures, lighting fixtures, tables... If you can think of it, you can build it from paper mache. From the ancient Egyptians to the Victorians and beyond, artists and craftsmen through history have mastered this art form to create fantastic pieces that are ornamental, original and even functional.

In this class we will work one on one to build the paper project of your dreams - unique sculptures, armatures, masks, small pieces of furniture, etc. We will consider the desired strength and texture of your piece and learn about the many different structural options, recipes and compositing methods of creating a paper mache sculpture - from using conventional paper strips and glue mixtures, to mixing our own paper pulp and working with the super strong celluclay, we will explore the many mixtures and methods available to create your fantastic pieces.

Students will complete at least one paper mache project piece before the end of the class (2x3 ft maximum), and will leave the class with the knowledge of how to create their magnificent works of art from home with accessible and recyclable materials. Materials fee includes all paper materials, glues, materials for structural bases such as wire, cardboard and wood, plus finishing materials including paint and varnish.

Instructor
Launa Eddy is a multi-diciplinary artist living in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She has a BA in anthropology and spent two years learning glass-blowing in NH before moving to NYC to work in sculpting, stop animation and video production. She works primarily with paper mache, metal, and clay and has made many unique pieces for parades, store displays, music videos, photo shoots, private collections and beyond.

Enroll online here, or call 718-715-4961

simple surrealist-let

i sculpted this from wax and decided to cast this into brass because it a softer metal and can flex. silver would be ideal but its so expensive right now.....