Inspired by my friend Earl, I am starting a new art project. I am calling it Operation Slartibartfast. Slartibartfast was a character in the whimsical, unpredictable Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy series of books where it was revealed he fabricated custom-made planets.
I hit upon the idea of making custom-made globes. People do craft these things, but most of them are representations of Earth. Earl suggested I make fictional worlds, so I will make the planet Mongo from Flash Gordon, the planet Krypton from Superman, and the Death Star from Star Wars.
I didn't want to make a globe from scratch, so I hunted around in goodwill stores until I found some used, discarded globes for sale.
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| A cheap globe around the size of a softball. |
This globe is handsome in black and silver, but it doesn't bear up to close inspection. It's the kind of decoration best kept in some corner where people don't go. For one thing, the entire globe is plastic, and is quite cheap. For another, the details aren't accurate.
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Je peux voir ma maison d'ici...
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This globe is also printed in French, and unusual to find in a store in British Columbia. Finally, and I didn't discover this until I returned home, the globe is a coin bank. Notice the slot in the upper Pacific Ocean - either the globe is a bank or there's a strip mine from Alaska to Kamchatka.
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| He's got the whoo-oole world in his hand... |
On the plus side, since the globe is a bank, it's fairly easy to remove from the cheap stand. The coin plug on the bottom opens to reveal an aperture perhaps wide enough to stuff a battery-operated LED light. If I drill tiny careful holes into the globe, I could illuminate it from within which would be really nice for the Death Star.
The coin slot is undesirable, though. I am covering it over with masking tape and hoping for the best. The next step is to cover the globe in gesso, which I will demonstrate next JSVB post.
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