Meet Billie.
Phase 1
In 2018 I was invited to an exhibition called Queer Craft. I had used a clunky program to create a fictional child using photos of myself and my husband, wondering what a biological child would look like from a same-sex couple. The finished work was a 2D blue-and-white image in porcelain.
Now with access of Artificial Intelligence, I have continued this project to make Billie, my fictional son. This image was the first step in making a sculpture.
Phase 2
To get Billie from an image to a physical sculpture I hired a designer to render it in a 3d modeling program. I decided to have the model made without hair.
From the 3d model I used a printing service to create a mask-like object in plastic. Printing the whole head would have been out of my budget, so I decided that the most relevant part would be the face.
I scaled up the head to be anatomically correct for a 6 year old when calculating the 16% shrinkage of porcelain.
Phase 3
A urethane mold was made and porcelain was used to press into it. I used a clay that vitrified to an almost glass-like surface without glaze, giving a very skin-like appearance.
Continued Ideas
Since making a portrait of Billie I’ve been able to think about other ways to create objects from this concept. I’ve thought a lot about genes and how eye color is one of the first foundations on learning about DNA and heritage. While I have brown eyes my mother has blue eyes; my husband has blue eyes and it would theoretically be possibly for my child to also have blue. I am very interested in this aspect because of the cultural significance of blue eyes: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Aryan people, etc. I have created an open edition of eyes that explore how/why we are fascinated by eye color and how it relates to familial bonds.