This shrine was inspired by a trip to Texas I did last year with my family. It’s a long, brutal drive from Phoenix to Dallas, so I bought a lot of snacks for my kids, the kind of snacks they don’t usually get. I bought candy and chips and cheetoes and juice boxes and basically filled the car with processed HFCS-filled junk food in brightly colored packages. Good times, good times.
As I raided the grocery store for all this horrid, un-nutritious, delicious food, I was reminded of trips we took as children, driving across the west to various national parks my father wanted to visit. I don’t remember Yosemite, but I do remember a package of plain M&Ms that we fought over like starving dogs. (We never got as much candy as we wanted.) I was also reminded of Egyptian tombs, which included jars full of oil and grain and other foodstuffs. When going on a long, difficult journey, it’s best to have snacks.
I did this whimsical combination of the two. I made the gilded trim and the food out of polymer clay. It took me two years to finish it, since I prefer to work on polymer clay in the summer months (84 degrees room temperature makes polymer clay easier to work with.) I made the head and hands out of paperclay, and I made the body out of foamcore board and tea-stained gauze. The hair is embossing floss.
These shrines I make are some of the best-received pieces of 3-D art I make, second only to the smiley balls and the altered books. I would say they take the least in terms of traditional art skill, that is, craftsmanship and technique, but they take more creativity than almost anything else I do.
