Adios Alejandro!

when souther asked me to make a soft sculpture for the installation he was doing for the fumetto comix festival, i was stoked. i never made a plush creature that big before and was excited to work on the installation in general. we decided to make it out of cardboard boxes with painted facades so that we could break it all down flat for easy shipping later.

we went to the fabric store and souther fell in love with this shiny, hairy material for the guy’s space suit. it turned out awesome on him, but while i worked on the piece everything in the studio, including us, was covered in tiny shiny threads. thankfully, i finished him in 2 days and named him Alejandro, since he was born in highland park (and there aren’t enough people with 4-syllable names. we could only come up with: Bartholemew, Rumpelstiltskin & Alexander.)

it was nice having him around. i put a tie on him and we’d sit him up here and there around the apartment. he’s quite the character actually. i wanted to bring him to the carnival last week to ride on the ferris wheel, but didn’t for fear of getting his fur dirty.

we finished packing up alejandro and the rest of the installation today in two big boxes and shipped them off via Nippon Express to zurich. aside from 2 bags of polyfil and some prints, we managed to remember to pack everything. i must say, i miss the big guy. we’ll see him soon in switzerland though!

some last pictures of the installation before shipping:

workin’ on it.

souther was taking photos from a step stool and got this warped picture of me as a munchkin.

souther made a safety helmet for alejandro’s trip. he wasn’t too happy that we didn’t fly him first class.

Felipe the awesome shipping man. he was lost in the neighborhood for 40 minutes and for some reason his calls to souther wouldn’t go through, but he was still patient and nice when he finally found us.

hasta la vista, alejandro!