I’m going to start by prefacing this entire bit of weirdness with;
Connections sell art.
Someone may see a piece of art they like, but the connection to the piece, the story, and the artist, is what actually SELLS the art.
So while I do really enjoy “blogging” and sharing my stories, I’d be fibbing just a bit if I didn’t share that part of what I’m doing, is putting myself out there in the hopes that you’ll catch what I’m throwing out there and we’ll connect.
And my point to this preface is, as I write this latest bit out and against my better judgment decide to tell you what I’m going to tell you: I can GUARANTEE that you’re going to know by the end of this, if I’m your cup o’ piss (or not).
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I’m REALLY excited about my latest piece: I’m Not Everyone’s Cup Of Piss. One, because it’s just a cool piece and a fun concept but two, because I decided to add a “functioning” specimen cup to the piece.
Which is something brand new for me: working with specimen cups. I mean I’ve peed in them, sure, but I’ve never really “worked” with them in an artistic type of endeavor.
That was of course until this past week.
I had a local glass artist cut both my specimen cup and the top in half, laterally.
What I also decided was that I wanted to add “faux urine” to my specimen cup. How fun?!
I spent a little bit of time brainstorming how I would go about doing that. I decided that I could create a faux urine liquid and then use a silicone sealant to seal it in the cup with a piece of clear plastic to-go sushi container top on the back.
This was a quick solution especially since I had done something similar for another piece of art called: A Salt… With A Deadly Weapon.
The difference here being that I was filling my halved container with liquid vs sand and glitter. Figuring out the liquid was my next issue.
Now I’m not complaining when I say this was an issue. I spent my day lining up clear cups of “faux piss” on my countertop and taking literal notes…
No complaints here. Just weird.
I started with warm water and food coloring. I used a clear plastic cup and mixed the cloudy orange looking mixture. It looked nothing like urine. Nothing.
I grabbed a sharpie and scrawled “water & food coloring” on the cup and set it on the counter.
The food coloring was so far off I opted for something different altogether and went with a tiny dab of yellow acrylic paint mixed in warm water.
And while the color was slightly better than what I had just gotten with the food coloring, the opacity was not. This DEFINITELY did not resemble urine at all. I labeled this cup “acrylic paint & water” and put it onto the counter.
I hate to admit how much time it took me to have the idea to use water color paint to… well color the water, but it definitely took some brainstorming time…
And lucky for me, was worth the extra think time because the consistency of bright yellow watercolor paint in warm water was definitely screaming: urine.
The color however, was not.
So I scrawled “bright yellow watercolor paint & water” on the cup and set it down on the counter next to the others.
At this point, the counter looked like the most f’d up Goldilocks story rendition you’ve ever heard: three cups of faux piss and nothing was quite right. The first one was too orange and cloudy, the second was too opaque, and the third was the correct opacity but the color was too greenish.
And we weren’t going for greenish pee… because ONLY high quality faux piss was going to work here.
I ended up playing around a lot at this point. I had a good run of “not quite faux piss” cups going on my counter, neatly labeled, yellow-ish, but not quite right, and I was getting a wee bit (British piss joke right there) frustrated by my piss poor (another pun) piss abilities, when it dawned on me:
I couldn’t get the color right because I didn’t have anything to match it to.
Which leads me to my confession:
Let me tell you… it is SO easy to color match your faux urine when you’re holding your very own cup of real urine to match it to.
So I did. And while I learned that my day’s water intake was NOT spot on, I realized that my piss matching skills (once provided an accurate reference) were. Like I’m talking potential career (if this sort of thing was a career and thankfully it’s not, but my point is… my faux pee looked LEGIT).
Now if you’re thinking of getting judgy I get it, you just read a blog about me color matching my own piss out of a clear plastic cup and that’s fair but… before you ask me, “why didn’t you just Google ‘cups of pee’ like you would with any other reference photo?”
I’d ask you what’s more disgusting: Googling other people’s urine and potentially influencing your algorithm and future searches, or a little bit o’ your own pee in a cup?
And anyway, because you obviously know the conclusion that the question brought me to: my own pee in a cup is exponentially less disgusting than a Google search and multiple images of strangers’ piss, so there ya go…
Which brought me to the other realization that this was by far my weirdest reference for a piece of art to date.
Some people use photos and models for their painting references… today I marked a to-date career high and used a cup of my own piss.
Anyway… stay tuned… I can’t wait to show you this piece when she’s all done!