It may seem a bit early to some to start thinking about
Halloween, but if you love Halloween like I do you know that it is never too
early to be starting a Halloween project.
My folk art projects and dioramas can be pretty complex at times and
sometimes I’m working up to the last minute.
I’d rather have it done sooner so I can enjoy it longer before putting
it away. So I’ve learned to start
earlier than the beginning of October.
Some years I make only one project, other years I may make a
couple. Since I only work on these
projects in my spare time, I always have more ideas than I have time to make
them.
Since my last project was started from a flat piece of
paper and built up from there, I decided to do something with found objects
this time. Once in a while it is nice
not to have to reinvent the wheel. So I
started prowling the aisles of my local thrift store looking for something that
would serve as a support for the piece.
I saw an unusual metal stand, but it was really expensive so I
thought I’d go home and think about what I might do with it before I purchased
it. I gave it some thought and returned
to the thrift store to purchase the stand.
Unfortunately, someone had already purchased it. So I started over again looking at different
metal pieces that might work in a project. 
I found a smaller stand with some interesting features. (Photo 1. I was so excited about getting started that I started wrapping the stand in copper before I took its picture.)
It is metal, probably aluminum, and has metal balls on the feet and the
top of the pillars. (Photo 2) It also had some type of decorative curlicue
on the base, but I wasn’t really interested in that. To me, this base practically screamed “Tesla
Coil!” I really had no clear idea beyond
that, but I purchased the stand and began the process of figuring out what I
was going to do with it. It doesn’t look
like a Tesla Coil to you? It will by the
end of the project.
The start of my creative process for this piece was to get
some inspiration. I went to http://images.google.com/ and input Tesla coils into the search box. They have some absolutely amazing photos of
Tesla coils in action. If you have never
seen one of these devices, you should take a look.
It will give you a much healthier respect for electricity.
Once I had satisfied myself that I knew how I wanted to represent a Tesla Coil, I then had to ask myself:
“How any of this applied to Halloween?”
There is a rather obscure connection.
In the 1930’s the Biestel Company had put out an orange and black Halloween
card with a silhouette of a hissing black cat. The cat’s fur was shot through with electric
bolts to represent its fur all fluffed up. I’d seen it in a book on Halloween
collectibles. So here was my connection
to Halloween.
My next questions were: “Was there any significance to this
unusual card? What was happening with
electricity at that time that might prompt the creation of such a card?” (Yeah, I’m a history geek too.) There is an historical connection. In 1936, one of the projects of the New Deal
was the Rural Electrification Act. It
brought electricity, and later telephone service, to rural and remote locations. (This project actually lasted from 1936 to
1994. So, if you live in a rural or
remote location in the United States and have electricity and telephone service, say thank you to
President Roosevelt and the New Deal.)
So now I have my connection between Tesla Coils and Halloween. All that is left is to work out the details. Check back for my next blot post about that.
My husband was really excited when I started talking about
Tesla Coils. He thought I was going to
build a real one and put it into my art work.
He was very disappointed when I told him it was only going to be an
artistic representation of a Tesla Coil.
Seeing his disappointment, I actually contemplated the possibility of
building a small one. I decided against
it because some of the project will be paper maché over metal armature. While the possibility of building a piece of
art that ignites itself and burns itself to the ground has some appeal from a
burner project standpoint, it really is not my plan for this project. But, I’ll file that idea away for some future.
Next blog: Halloween
Tesla Project Part One
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