Soap carving & paper-pulp sculpting

Today, I woke up early to prepare myself for the fifth graders to come back to work on their soap carving. They seemed excited to get back to work. Several of them finished one bust and began a second, while others opted to carve a key out of soap as I had shown them mine. They traced their house keys- and then carved them. I offered one boy a cord to hold his key- but it was a nylon string that was kind of unwinding at the end- making it hard to thread through the keyhole. So I showed him a trick- by whipping out a lighter and melting the end so that it was hard & easy to thread. He seemed impressed- or maybe a little surprised at the sudden flame before his eyes. The children agreed to let me borrow their carvings for my exhibition in Tartu, provided they got them back and I would throw in an additional class- next week to show them how to make “prison style” dream catchers out of Q-tips, toilet paper, & dental floss. Again, I had two girls come after school- ready to work more on their busts- now that they know they will be shown in Tartu. One girl even made a movable tongue that could be moved from the back end of the head- almost like some sort of puppet for an animation.
After class, John came by with his big mixer, and helped me puree the paper pulp. I used cheesecloth to strain the excess water out of the mixture & then was able to mold it over my cardboard armature for my "compartmentalized meal trays". I got to meet Thomas, another local artist working with sound- sculpture & also a member of MoKS. He noticed that one of the pawns was missing on the origami chess set of Marcel’s. The pawn had actually slipped through a hole in a box on its way home after an exhibition in France. It was the only missing piece. I have asked Marcel to make a replacement for it- but apparently they no longer carry that special thick pastel paper on his canteen. I was thinking about it- conceptually & in a way having a missing piece is what disables the game, which in a strange way is also what animates it. It illustrates the power of one in some sort of social structure. Thomas mentioned that he has a “sickness” for chess- so perhaps we will get a chance to play a game sometime- as the virtual version is not quite the same. After a conversation we had about social psychology & the possibilities of Internet research -it seems that the “virtual” is not always equivalent to the “real”. The town mayor also made a visit to MoKS- just at an inopportune moment for me to shake his hand- because it was covered in paper pulp, but we acknowledged each other with a smile & he got a glimpse of the mischief that I am up to.
We had a communal style lunch-, which was prepared with no running water- as it was cut off for construction purposes for the later part of the day. Now the electricity went out again- & that also shuts off the internet- so I am leaching WiFi from outside the Mooste inn. What a devoted blogger I have become! It’s like going outdoors to pump one's water from a well or to gather firewood- I am merely gathering wireless signals.
Estonian word of the day: “Maavarin”, meaning earthquake