Last Friday was my group’s turn to create a Project Space in C02, a tall, white room about 12′ x 15′ in size. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, a pair of students create work and show it in this space.
Since the studio MFA students are an odd number now (some left at the end of last semester) my group was three artists, me, Magdalena Bañuelos, and Romy Rementeria.

Romy and Magdalena had spoken about the project before I came on board, and I saw no reason to change their basic concept–a stop motion animation. They already had some ideas for the story, so we discussed it further and worked the storyline out so we all understood what we were doing; the basic concept was to show the birth of a creature from toxic wastes and then to imply his subsequent capture and life as a sideshow freak. The project space would be dressed in such a way as to imply a sideshow in a carnival or circus and a larger model of the creature would be on display while the film played.
Romy and Magdalena created the set, an alleyway, and our antagonist, a creepy guy who started life as an obscure action figure. I designed the creature which we all discussed and approved, and then sculpted the large version. Romy and I together created the small version for the animation. All three of us worked on animating the characters and then edited the film. Mag created the one special effects shot in the film, when the antagonist ejaculates.
To further tell the story, I created three photoshopped images of the creature in freak shows over the years, which were added at the end as a slideshow.
For the space itself, I sculpted the Creature, which stands about a foot and a half tall. I first sculpted it from Floral Foam, a product used by florists to secure flowers in arrangements. It is very easy to cut, shape, carve and sculpt, but is also very fragile, easily getting unintended dents and abrasions. My next step was to coat this with a thin layer of papier-maché to give it strength. I painted it and he was done.
On Wednesday, we began to set up the space. We had an idea to project the film onto the floor which required that we secure the projector up high. Over the door is a window which leads to a small room. We were told that this room contains asbestos so we decided not to go traipsing around in it but instead used the sill of the window as an anchor point. I took charge of the projection equipment and spent time up a ladder building a shelf that would hold the video projector at the proper angle. I also mounted the dvd player and a set of speakers up there as well.
Romy and Magdalena created two sidelights that would cast shadows of a crowd onto the walls, giving the impression of a roomful of people. The Creature was set on a plinth that was wrapped in burlap, at the far end of the room with a single red light shining up at him. Our refreshments were popcorn, the smell of which filled the room, and soda pop.
The speakers ran an ongoing collection of background noise that I culled from multiple sources, which simulated the sounds of a carnival or circus– barkers, crowds, calliope music, and so forth. The audio on the film is that of a 16mm film projector and then a slide projector.
I apologize for the lack of quality photos of the actual installation, but I hope to get some better ones and will add an update later.
The background audio track of carnival sounds (lo-fi version for bandwidth) is linked below, if you are so inclined.
The Project Space was open from 3:30 on Friday, and at about 4:15, the door was closed and the piece was critiqued. Although there was some disappointment with our choice of a sideshow environment (it was seen that perhaps we fixed it to firmly into a time and place, and that it could have worked as a present-day sort of exhibit), and the limited use we made of the stop motion technique (not enough Gumby-esque splatting), overall the response was positive. I think that we managed to create the project space we intended, although we might have been able to create a better one had this been the only project we had to concentrate on.
My take on what we created is this superfiction: ¬†A traveling sideshow has a creature that has been around for maybe 60 years. Is it real? Probably not. It was probably a gaff created by a worker rather than an actual creature, but perhaps this creature did exist, lived, died and was taxidermied. Sometime in the 1990s, someone finds the creature in the carnival storeroom and decides to show it off again. He creates story around the creature’s creation, perhaps even finds some archive photos of it and decides to make an animated film depicting the story. Then he sets it up on a plinth in a tent and shows his film. Probably it was the warmup to another act-just a way to keep the crowds moving through the sideshow.
The movie is after the break, and may be offensive to some. It contains cartoon masturbation, ejaculation and implied creature abuse. We hope you find it amusing, though.