Project Cranium: The SKULLpture of Baron Dixon

Ever since I was a kid I have always had a fascination with bones. I don't know what it is. Probably because I find them strangely beautiful, much more... like seashells. Seashells and Bones are the hard evidence that some organism once shared space with them. Human skeletons are often scary looking, and yet, wrapped around most human skeletons are some fabulously beautiful people. I like that aesthetic contrast. I'm always looking for that duality, the beautiful within the horrific. It makes me stop and take a longer look and try to admire the hidden beauty of something or someone ugly.

As a kid I loved natural history museums (Art museums became a much later love affair) and seeing the reconstructed dinosaur skeletons,and thinking about tht guys who first found them, dug them up, and reassembled them without an instruction manual. My grandparents lived out in the country and I loved finding old cow skulls and such out in the field.I'd pretend they were dinosaurs and that maybe, just maybe, a few live ones might still be around. For me, a box of old bones was a treasure chest!

In the summer before I entered College the movie "Alien" came out. The film features a scene where astronauts stumble across a derelict alien shipwreck on an uncharted planet, and find the very realistic bones of a dead alien inside, with evidence of some kind of internally generated trauma that killed it. That rekindled my fascination with bones, and I started creating my own collection of "Alien skulls"out of kiln-fired stoneware clay, which I would then paint to look like real dessicated bone. I would proudly display them as knick-knacks on my shelves, as ersatz "Specimens" from my travels to other worlds (or some perversely mutated corner of THIS world, since there was an oddly human feel to all of them). Sometimes I would build a display stand for a skull that lookedlike part of the rest of the creature it belonnged to.

I turned a very elaborate one in as my final project in my second semester of Sculpture in college. Its stand actually possessed something of a ribcage,although I took artistic liberties with it to make it more interesting and asymmetrical (That's the tall center piece in the photo in my photos section here!). I was rather amused by the reactions of people who were unfamiliar with me and my work. A biology student criticized the piece for not having the correct rib-count. At first I was offended until I learned that she thought the damn thing was REAL! A similar comment came from one of my fellow students who worked in a different section of the sculpture labs:"Who th' hell brought these old bones in here?" Needless to say I was proud of my inadvertent deception of my viewers. Got an "A" , too. Bonus!

I still make skulls and skeletons now and then. Sometimes I like to put comical fish-bones in my Cat paintings. I've also made 3-D paintings of imaginary prehistoric fish skeleton specimens and flying beasts. I don't do it as often as i used to, but I have a lot of fun just letting my imagination run wild in different media whenever I get my Jones to make Bones!

Just thought I'd share one of the many strange things about me since I ran across this video of my original skull collection the other day. The sound collage in the audio track is all mine.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Baron
• Dixon
• Art
• sculpture
• ceramic
• alien
• skulls
• skeleton
• bone

[Totobuvika]

Scary somehow, and the music fits well.

[BaronDixon]

@Totobuvika Thank you, Totobuvika! The music is all a bunch of different experimental sound effects created by manipulating various ambient noises in a free software called "Audacity". Extreme noise reduction would create these very organic sounding rhythms and hums that sounded like alien medical technology. It's a really great way to build up a Sci-Fi sound effects library.

[ColonPal]

@BaronDixon -- Sure! Sounds good -- I'm just sitting at home for another 2 months!

[BaronDixon]

@ColonPal We should hook up over at your place some time. I'll dig out the collection of skulls and bring 'em over.

[ColonPal]

@BaronDixon -- HAHA!

That's hysterical! I would love to come see them again!

[BaronDixon]

@ColonPal Well, feeding them was hard because I rarely found anything they liked. Then they started eating each other, and the whole thing became a hot mess. I don't care what "District 9" says, these guys wouldn't touch cat food with a ten-meter cattle prod--even the Fancy Feast stuff!

[BaronDixon]

@ColonPal Yeah, most of those are kiln-fired stoneware clay. There are a couple of polymer clay critters in there as well. One or two are stoneware clays that can be baked in a home oven. Nevo350 I think it was called. The computer readouts are just a "typing" title effect in Windows Movie Maker.

[ColonPal]

@zoro071 -- They're aliens alright! I met them in the flesh when I was at Baron's last time. He's got a whole alien family living in his basement, 2 of them are still on life-support, these are just video evidence of the ones that died.

[ColonPal]

Really neat!! I love the computer typing effect! Are those made out of clay Baron?

[BaronDixon]

@MrSrbokap Did you bother to read the description included with the video? And what's a "Fakeeee" (Did I spell it right, with four "E's"?)