Poor SassyCat! (or, "got a kiln?")

So the sculpting badge set off with great potential -- I had the help of my mother-in-law, Linda, who is not only a regular art teacher but also a deeply talented one. There was no way for this to fail, right?

The sculpture badge is one of the easiest, in theory. There are just two requirements: to sculpt (the medium is not specified) a replica of an object from the vast annals of art and to sculpt (and sketch) an object from nature. While I'd originally planned that my object-from-nature would be a leaf or something equally immobile, Linda had a great suggestion: try for a (somewhat artistically interpreted) Maisie the cat, who is immobile for hours at a time (or at least is asleep for hours at a time) and is also someone I know quite well. Plied with kibble, Maisie agreed to be thus immortalized, and with a few minutes to mix up some of the classic flour-salt-and-water clay, we were on our way.

Clay-Maisie started out pink and round, with big green eyes, an alert pose, and (in what I thought was a particularly good detail) a little white tail tip. Clay-Maisie (henceforth referred to as SassyCat because her little carved-in mouth gave a look full of, well, sass) is also heavy, maybe half a pound. (This is roughly 1/16 the size of Maisie.) While Linda did most of the actual art involved and I giggled and made wry remarks, I was feeling pretty good about it.

Then, tragedy.

We left SassyCat out to dry overnight, expecting to wake to a sturdy pink kitty. Instead we found nothing so much as a patty of cat. (If you reached this site via a Google search for "patty of cat," go away. You are not welcome here, you sick dude. Yeah, I'm talking to you.) SassyCat had shrunk to roughly half of her original height, but her diameter, well, you be the judge.

Clearly, SassyCat had collapsed under the weight of her own sass.

And do not get me started on the scupting from the art canon component of the badge, in which Chinese terracotta horse travelled from, well, yeah.

A timeline below will give you the idea.










Exactly.