The Naked Silo

by  Milé Murtanovski  and  Celia Sage 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase Two] Milé's patterned background [a suburban lot plan] immediately suggested to me the site maps used at the many campgrounds to which my husband and I have taken our trailer –our home away from home.  A new favourite is on the Maine coast, hence the mermaid. – Celia Sage  Born and Bred and Bored and Dead by Milé Murtanovski 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase One] Click the image above to see all ten Phase One paintings from our HOME project.

by  Celia Sage  and  Milé Murtanovski 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase Two] As a contrast to Celia’s tranquil and pastoral landscape with its surreal eyes keeping watch, I’ve painted one of the seemingly millions of ever-present wire-festooned poles that line Scarborough’s streets (here at Kennedy and Lawrence, the very heart of bland convenience) like superhuman fence posts or totem poles for communication, electricity, and boredom. – Milé Murtanovski  Home Made –Squall Shadowed Hills by Celia Sage 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase One] Click the image above to see all ten Phase One paintings from our HOME project.

by  Milé Murtanovski  and  Celia Sage 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase Two] As an immigrant to Canada myself, it seemed logical to recast Milé's female figure as myself on the day I arrived.  Milé's Macedonian word balloon was more problematic, however, so I searched for phrases using "home" to find something that would suit my context, and I came up with the title, which seems to dovetail nicely with Milé's original idea.*  (Google Translate** helped me render it in what I hope is Macedonian, in keeping with the letter on his side of the painting, which I retained as a decorative element). I use the phrase humorously here but not without a grain of truth. – Celia Sage  Conform or Be Cast Out by Milé Murtanovski 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase One] Click the image above to see all ten Phase One paintings from our HOME project. *In my painting, the Macedonian word written in Cyrillic is "Eng...

by  Celia Sage  and  Milé Murtanovski 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase Two] As with “Homemakers” I've pluralized Celia’s original title as my parents were also my and my sister’s “home builders” in a manner of speaking (originally, I titled this “Providers” but simply pluralizing Celia's title is more elegant). I apologize profusely to my parents for my very bad likenesses of them here. – Milé Murtanovski Home Builder by Celia Sage 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase One] Click the image above to see all ten Phase One paintings from our HOME project.

by  Milé Murtanovski  and  Celia Sage 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase Two] I'd like to subtitle this "Apologies to Krista" because it seemed awful to paint over the loving likeness Milé had created.  However, "in the name of Art," I tried to turn her into me, with shades reflecting the County, which I have made my beloved home for over 30 years.  (The missing sunglasses arm is just me staying off of Milé's half of the painting.) – Celia Sage Where the Heart Is by Milé Murtanovski 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase One] Click the image above to see all ten Phase One paintings from our HOME project.

by  Celia Sage  and  Milé Murtanovski 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase Two] Celia’s place of origin is different (and much farther) from mine, but our destinations are virtually the same, as indicated by the light blue outline of the northern part of Prince Edward County still visible on Celia’s half, and, more specifically to me, the silo at Small Pond Arts , my home. – Milé Murtanovski Home Range by Celia Sage 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase One] Click the image above to see all ten Phase One paintings from our HOME project.

by  Milé Murtanovski  and  Celia Sage 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase Two] The female figure in the centre of Milé's painting was unavoidable, so in order to respond to the idea of Home on my half I transformed her into a younger version of myself, backed by the foothills and mountains which were the background of my early life. I turned Milé's Scarborough hydro corridor into the lines which bring the actual hydroelectric power that keeps Boise's home fires burning. – Celia Sage  Scarberian Rhapsody by Milé Murtanovski 24" x 24", oil on canvas, 2017 [HOME: Phase One] Click the image above to see all ten Phase One paintings from our HOME project.

From this post onward (in this series), I'll be detailing the process of stripping this model of most of its surface detail (and adding bits) to see what the Millennium Falcon might have looked like when it was newly-built, fresh from the factory, and displayed in a sales showroom, available for purchase by whoever had if before Lando Calrissian (if anyone). If you want to know why I'm doing this (and what my design parameters are), I suggest reading PART ONE , where I go into that in great (perhaps tedious) detail. The big box of parts. Bandai's models are truly amazing (I have previously built their  C-3PO and Y-Wing kits). They're highly and accurately detailed and extremely easy to put together –in fact, you barely even need glue since the parts are engineered to snap together or fit snugly simply by pressing them together. A little cleanup of snipped parts from the sprues is necessary, but I've yet to come across any flash, and the extremely ...

Intention: the Millennium Falcon before extensive mods. This is going to be a very long and (depending on your interest in Star Wars and modeling, etc.) tedious post. You can skip this and track my progress with this project by going directly to... Part 2: The Undoing or YT-1300 Freighter with Cargo Carrier Reference: the Millennium Falcon  after extensive mods. I mention briefly in this post about me being greatly inspired to return to modeling (after a two decade hiatus) specifically by seeing all the amazing models of the Millennium Falcon people have been building and posting online on various fora and YouTube, but I'll go into painstaking detail about my decision/attitude here (mostly for my own records and to document my motivations/rationalizations for this project). My first view of the ship was in the cards in 1977. My attitude at the time (winter 2015/16) was that I didn't want to build a screen accurate Falcon because so many gre...