Art of Science Challenge: REVEAL...

The lovely and talented, Tara Linda, hosted a challenge on her blog.  The prompt was an image of Orion's Nebula taken by NASA.  She first proposed the challenge HERE.

I have always loved these images of outer space.  To me, they've always looked like the most luminescent silk paintings of billowing celestial clouds.  This is the birthplace of stars.

The image of a place of creation stuck with me.  I kept thinking that this faraway place will make new constellations... they will be constellations within a constellation. This is where the children of the heavens are born... the star children.

I did two things in this piece that I normally don't do in my work... I broke out the plastic babies and the glitter.

I gessoed and covered the plastic baby in gold-leaf.  Simultaneously, I prepared the inside of a copper, fold-formed box I made recently.  I sealed all the seams, coated everything in gesso, and then added layers of paint.  My trusty hairdryer helped speed this process up.  I then had a high quality image of the nebula printed on a laser printer and glued it in place.  I sealed the image and noticed that the photo had sort of flattened.  Those sparks of life that give the original a truly ephemeral feeling kind of disappeared.  So this is where the glitter comes in.  I sparingly used it to simulate the stars. I glued the baby down and once everything was dry, I embedded the baby in resin.

I wasn't exactly thrilled with the end result.  It needed something else.  I busted out the drill and created four recessions in the corners of the surface of the resin.  I set vintage rhinestones in the holes.  I think that it's a nice little detail that elevates the piece.  The crystals seem to float and gives it another dimension.

The pendant that I made was simply strung on a stainless steel ball chain.  I had originally planned this elaborate embellished chain with clusters of beads in the colors from the photo, but I thought it distracted too much from the actual pendant and had a little too much Rainbow Brite action.  So I edited it down to just a length of ball chain.

Check out what the other challengers made:

Tara Linda
Angie Warren
D of Wondrous Strange Designs
Sarajo ~ SJ Designs
Marina of Fanciful Devices
Andrew Thornton (You are here)