Alternative Artefacts pitcher. Rust paint through a stencil I cut with my Cricut.
Stencil, for the Alternative Artefacts pitcher. It said it was reusable, but it’s not.
Me wearing the latest Alternative Artefacts t-shirt, in XL Black.
This is the first draft of a logo for the fictional company, Alternative Artefacts/Upright Tools.
I bought an old oil can from an antique store as my prototype. This is the alternative spelling of the word ‘artefacts’.
Version two.
Version three.
I have to redraw the design, then reduce it, and cut a stencil....so, easy peasy, right?
Then I have to figure out what colour(s). Maybe the "A" will just be for the tag. I still have to do an image to go with the Upright Tools name.
This is a collage of a plastic heart from the dollar store, and wings that I got at the thrift shop. I like it for the shape of the wings. For the oil can project I need wings that don't spread out so much.
Version four.
Version 5. Much simpler. Now I have to cut a stencil, and see if I can apply paint through it onto a curved surface. No problemo, right? This would look good on a t-shirt.
Version 5 on a t-shirt in rusty colours.
Version 6. I'm losing track of how many I've done.
Ammo box from 1941. A potential project.
Alternative Artefacts/Upright Tools
The butcher sells bones with their skins wrapped around them,
the sweetest ones taste like the sea,
the hearts cost the earth, and the bones are expensive,
but the rest of the organs are free.
A man with a hammer put nails in my coffin,
it’s covered with thousands of jewels,
I twitch in my sleep, like there’s more to remember
than the simple momentum of tools.
I cough as the smokers make sad declarations,
they call themselves jokers.dot.com,
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again,
you can’t change the world with a bomb.
Changes were made to the house of remembrance,
it’s smaller than ever before,
twenty-six layers of latex emulsion
cover the walls and the door.
A man with a ladder came in through the window,
he’s wearing a leopard-skin coat,
he tells me my dreams have medicinal powers,
but love is the real antidote.
His face is a mirror for all those emotions
you swore you would never reveal,
I looked at his face as it made my reflection,
but sorrow is hard to conceal.
Who do you see when he looks at your image,
how do you live with the lie?
This is the sacrifice heaven requires,
an eye for an eye for an eye.
Pain is a lesson the body remembers,
I suffered a little too long,
I boiled the heart to a tender concoction,
since eating the living is wrong.
It cools on a plate as I look for the candles,
you have to eat slowly at first,
it bobs like a cork in a sea of emotion,
it’s shadow completely immersed.
They dressed me in silk for the mystery tour,
they did what they could with my hair,
they’re not really used to the sight of a body
encrusted in pearls, to be fair.
Time’s a machine with a mortal obsession,
it grinds you to darkness and dust,
hope is the flickering light from a candle,
igniting the things that combust.
The ladder man took out his fat leather wallet,
his pockets have tattering holes,
he’s perfectly drawn, from the tips of his fingers,
down to his Louboutin soles.
He paid me in coins from the country of menace,
I smiled in raptures of joy,
his eyes mirrored beauty in love’s admiration,
but sorrow is hard to destroy.
I captured the mood of a whole generation,
fame is beyond your control,
after the fire burned everything down to it’s embers,
they swallowed me whole.
I drew on the walls with a small yellow pencil,
I want you to feel what I felt,
you talked about dying from love’s poisoned arrow,
but my lump of a heart wouldn’t melt.
Gravity holds you with small restless fingers,
this is why everything moves,
you dance to the voice on the old vinyl record,
as the dust settles into the grooves.
The room is the colour of chalk over roses,
a sickly medicinal pink,
love is the memory no one remembers,
that’s why I wrote this in ink.
I drew on the floor by the light of the candle,
I want you to see what I saw,
the man with the tools stood in front of the mirror,
looking for memory’s flaw.
This is the sequence of life’s precious moments,
a man eats a snake eats a fish,
I want to evolve into something as real
as a shadowless heart on a dish.
Death is a skeleton knitting a sweater,
I want you to dream what I dreamt,
now that I’m shot through the heart with an arrow,
there’s nothing I wouldn’t attempt.
I slept in a room where the bed was an oyster
and I was the mythical pearl,
I’m not really sure how to prove that I’m saner than you,
but I’ll give it a whirl.
He said I was born from the void without mercy,
tomorrow is yesterday’s news,
little does he, with his heart beating madly,
know that I’d kill for his shoes.
mt forest April 2018
My new design for ‘Alternative Artefacts’. I want to turn this into a t-shirt. I need a better photograph though.
I’ve decided to change the design a little. I also need a better black background so I can take a good photograph. I’m making the text bigger too.
Alternative Artefacts, take two. I have to transfer this to a painted canvas, then stencil it. I’m out of stencil vinyl, so I had to use this instead. It’s regular vinyl. I hope it works. I wanted the text to be bigger, and the wings to be a bit more graceful. We’ll see how the stenciling goes. I like the colours in the original design, kind of like rusty painted metal.