In Chelsea’s workshop today, we explored the magic of salt dough.  It brought back memories of the time before I was in school, when I was home with my mom during the days before she re-entered the workforce.  We would sometimes make play dough and it was great.  I remember the smell of it especially.  We never baked it but we did sometimes leave it out to dry.  At first this morning I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make with my salt dough.  I didn’t really want to sculpt it.  It had a weird consistency at first, not weird for dough but weird for sculpting.  It doesn’t seem to hold sharp forms, it is always a little soft.  I decided to try to print something to make and impression, and I thought of the cyanotype book I made.  So I decided to try printing my face for fun and to see what it would look like.  I rolled the dough out into a strip using my hands, and then after trying a few times to press my face into it I settled on the idea of pressing my ear in first and then kind of rolling forward to get my eye and nose.  So the print ended up being a distorted impression of a face.  I think the most successful part is the ear–it’s king of a negative sort of along the lines of Rachael Whiteread or Marcel Duchamp.

The process of making the Dough is very simple, with only three ingredients: 2x Flour mixed with water and salt.  It mixed to a usable consistency quickly.

I enjoyed this project, it was relaxing.  I think it is best suited for very young kids who can’t really use clay yet.  After seeing what Brianna made with the coral though, I think it could be used in High School.  It might be interesting to use the dough to make a mold for impressions and then to pour plaster to get a positive.  It could make some interesting relief sculptures and introduce the idea of mold making.