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This project has been a decade in the making of sorts. I have a Kabucam picture of it from 2006, but other than that, I'm not sure when exactly I obtained it. HOW I obtained it however is still fresh in my mind. I was on a trip to a beach in Kenora, and was wandering around the shops with others. In a second-hand store, I spotted this scythe for sale, I believe for $50 if I recall. I passed at the time, but only a day or so later drove the 2+ hours back to Kenora to buy it, and return home. It's just... an amazing looking scythe. The blade has the perfect ratio between rusty coat and angry, jagged, shiny edge. The handle is in excellent condition, and the fittings all work perfectly. This was a scythe meant to be on display.
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And so it was, as evidenced by that Kabucam pic above. It migrated to three different walls, before finally being wrapped and moved to my new home in 2016. It was here that the project began in earnest. For YEARS I had stared at the scythe, deciding that something else had to be done with it. To just sit as-is seemed... unfinished. Yes, it was an excellent-quality aged scythe... but that's it. No, it needed more. Painting, whittling, staining, polishing, I wasn't sure which. I let it rattle around in my head. For years, it was an art project waiting to be born.
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On March 13, 2016, it began. She called to me enough that I could no longer resist her siren song. There are no plans or preconceived ideas as to what the end result will look like. I'm just putting my blade to her surface, and letting her speak to me as I whittle. Once I had finished the design of the handle, she told me that her name is Ursula.
We went through a bit of a ritual in her whittling, to make sure that my mind preplanned nothing.
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Between episodes, she was wrapped in my dropcloth. As you can see in the videos, it begins with her being uncovered, followed by whittling. After the video was recorded, I'd collect the wood chips (most of which went to fertilize the lawn), and generally clean up the whittling area. Ursula would be wrapped back in her black shroud, and left as untouched as possible between episodes. She left her shroud permenantly after episode 6, after the lines were done, with only the head remaining.
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She sat like this for months, either tucked away in a corner behind some boxes, or otherwise crudely mounted on the wall with tape, and bits of cloth. To be fair, the cloth was just to protect her from the stickyness of the tape, and the scratchyness of the mangled coffee can that's functioning as a temporary mount between another staff, and/or whatever random things I had kicking around. It was a weird time, I couldn't mount anything on the walls, and I wanted it out from behind those boxes. And for a while, there it sat mostly finished.
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On February 25th, 2017, her two faces were finished. One smiling, looking up at you as you gather your harvest. It can be kinda fun, scything down crops. The other side frowning, looking down on the severed remains of what fell below the cut. Nutrients for the future. She needed some colour though... something with glitter. The lines wrapped around her like tentacles, and this is Ursula, sea scythe of the deep. A deep, dark purple was needed.
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I set out one day to hunt down supplies for her sheath and nailpolish for her linework. I felt that the colour would call to me. Walking down the street, I came across Bianca Amor's Liquidation Supercentre, proclaiming every visit to be an adventure. I was not disappointed as I walked away with a tarp and three bottles of the nailpolish "Edgy" by Revlon. The moment I saw the the bottle shimmer between deep purple and deep blue, packed with glitter, I knew it was the one. At a dollar a bottle, I wasn't going to pass it up.
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And then the final recording process began (minus a a topcoat episode). She was finished on February 27, 2017, nearly a full year after the project began. My camera battery ended up dying twice, but we got it all recorded, and she turned out beautiful :D. The purple packed with sparkles looks amazing, and goes great with the rustic, aged look of the scythe. Wrapped in her purple tentacles, Ursula is ready for display :D
All her music videos can be found here, here and here.
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