Halfway there- 🤗🙃👻
“The Night Breaks In” – Original sculpture by MJ Seal. Paper ephemera, PVA glue and sackcloth. Approximately 22″ x 27″. C. 2020
The shape of this piece was inspired by a clump of peculiar fungus I found in the woods I found out later was called “Dead Man’s Fingers”- and yes they look like the fingers of a bloated corpse poking out of the ground 😧
I came up with the title after trying to translate “night is falling” into German. The translator spit out “die Nacht bricht herein” which en Anglais literally means “the night breaks in”. A perfect description for a piece that looks like a cross between a clawed hand and scary clump of tentacles breaking through the wall- esp once it’s painted black!
To start out with I built up a base of wadded up paper ephemera soaked in glue water (I think it’s only appropriate to use the remains of the day) then layered pieces of torn up sackcloth over the wadded up paper.
Next I stuck the “stalks”- which are made from rolled up rags wrapped up in paper mache clay- into the sackcloth. The stalks are held in place by additional layers of glue soaked paper ephemera.
After everything dried I added more paper mache clay to the end of each stalk – giving them a more finger like appearance- and made little offshoots of the main clump with additional sackcloth and paper ephemera (so it will look like it’s spreading!)
Now I just need to let this piece cure for a bit and then it will be ready for a skin of paint- stay tuned ….
MJ Seal .Art 
Pour l’instant, je ne suis pas sûre d’aimer cela, c’est trop dark pour moi, mais j’aime beaucoup ta démarche et j’ai hâte de voir le résultat avec la couleur. Bref pour l’instant je m’amuserais bien à faire peur à mes enfants avec cela…
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Merci! Cette sculpture va être très sombre et fantasmagorique je pense 🤔👻
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I’m imagining an entire wall of these, would it become more or less creepy? Less I think, it may even become cosy
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Thanks- yeah I have some other projects in mind that will look something like alien fungus poking through the walls. I just like the ideas of wall mounted sculptures- esp when they r hung at head level- it’s like a thought popping into your awareness 🤔
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Awesome! A great idea, I love this.
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Danke! Yeah I love it when I can bring a vision to life 🙃🤗
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interesting title 🙂
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I just thought the literal meaning of the German term for nightfall was so poetic 🤗
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