Jupiter Painted Hypertufa Sphere

Jupiter sphere with red spot

I finished painting and sealing my Hypertufa sphere.  I painted it to look like Jupiter.  Last blog post I showed the sphere with its base coats.  The last few days I painted in the turbulent atmosphere.  The  photos posted today were shot outside on a cloudy day.  Even though the sealer is supposed to be a matte finish it still reflected a lot of light.  It did not photograph that well outside. 
From several feet away, it appears to be swirling bands of color.  Viewed closer, you can see the many different bits of color that I painted to resemble the Jovian atmosphere.  I also need to make a smaller stand for it.  The stand is for one of my full size gazing balls and this sphere is too small for it.  I'll have to make another trip to the hardware store. Until spring, it will be sitting on top of the well.  Once the flowers are out, it will find a home somewhere among them.

Base coat for sphere

I guess some might wonder why I wanted to paint a sphere to look like Jupiter.  I actually came to that in a round about way.  When I start seeing something show up a number of times, I start paying attention to it.  I have to ask myself if this is synchronicity.  It is as if the universe has a way of telling me that it wants me to explore a subject further.  I think some of my best works of art have come from deciding to explore something that has been repeating itself until it gets my attention.  Other times, I make a work of art and synchronicities appear after I make the piece, as happened after I made the Folk Art Carousel.  Anyway, once something gets my attention, I feel the need to incorporate it into my art.

So from various sources, I started seeing references to Jupiter.  My first source showed up while I was making some Christmas gifts.  I was making some scented bath products and massage oils for some friends.  The products had various essential oils as part of the ingredients.  The oils had letters in parentheses after its name.  Further reading indicated that the letter corresponded to various planets and astrological signs and the affects that these planets/signs had on the oils.  Jupiter seemed to keep coming up.

About the same time period, I was perusing some magazine selections and came across a horoscope magazine.  I remembered that years ago I used to purchase a little astrology scroll that they used to have as an impulse buy up near the cash register at stores.  I picked up the magazine and flipped it open randomly to a page.  Guess what that page was about:  the planetary influences of Jupiter.   According to the information in the book of recipes I was using to make the gifts, and the magazine that I looked at, the planetary influences of Jupiter are good fortune, luck, growth, success, expansion, benevolence, and so on in that vein.  Furthermore, Jupiter was supposed to have an expansive effect on everything with which it comes into contact.  (At least on the positive side.  If you are making gifts, you would be sending good intentions and good thoughts I would think.)

Later on, as I was surfing the net and ended up on a link that took me to NASA space photos.  It had some beautiful photos of Jupiter.  Some of the photos were done in a false color mode which showed the turbulence of the atmosphere.  By now, Jupiter had my attention.  The high contrast colors of the false color photos really intrigued me with their potential for an interesting art project.

When it came time to paint the sphere, Jupiter was heavily on my mind.  I had used a couple of different casting methods when I was experimenting with Hypertufa earlier this year.  The casting method I used on this ball was to open a child's inflated plastic ball and fill it with Hypertufa.  (See more information on casting Hypertufa in my blog posts made May 5, 2014 through May 14, 2014 at the address for this blog:  folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com  or click on the months listed at the right side of the page and scroll down for those dates.)  The method used to cast the ball left a small circular indentation at the top of the sphere.  When I looked at it, it reminded me of one of the bands of atmosphere I had seen in the photos of Jupiter.  And that combination of events is what ended up with me painting the sphere to look like Jupiter.  It kind of makes sense in a garden ornament.  If you have a sphere to grace your garden, and each time you look at it, it serves as a reminder of prosperity, good luck, success, optimism, and benevolence it is exactly what you would want in your garden.

Regular readers will remember that I have blogged that I started using symbolism in my work.  This project shows that symbolism can be incorporated even into a single object.  Will everyone get the symbolism?  Probably not.  They will just see a sphere painted like a planet.  But that really does not matter, as the objects that one puts in the garden generally have meaning for the gardener.  If in fact symbols do have affects on people, even if they do not recognize them, then the viewers have been sent a symbol of benevolence.  If not, it can still stand as a reminder to the creator of the sphere that there once was a time when there was enough leisure time to make and paint a sphere.  To access that memory can be enough on a tough day.

A reminder to regular readers:  my blogging schedule has changed.  I will be blogging on Sundays and Thursdays this year.