Arash had written “Happy belated birthday Emily” on the inside of the innermost piece of packing paper, and signed his name. I had previously admired his cast sculptures, and how his process put him in touch with ancient ways of life, and how each of his pieces had different meanings imprinted in it.
I was mesmerized by the shape I held in my hand. It was organic, but not quite human. One part had spiky blobs growing out of it. Another part seemed like it had been squeezed, but I couldn’t figure out how a human hand could have squeezed it in that way. Two small patches seemed to have been dremeled smooth. It was clearly not just an arbitrary blast of resin, but something Arash had corrected to an intended shape. I asked Arash for its story.
It is a cast of a mold he made of a friend’s cast of a T-rex skull. So it is the exact size and shape as a T-rex brain! He made 7 copies before his mold broke, and gave one to me because I study the brains of birds, dinosaurs’ closest living relatives. I’m excited to share this with my friends, family and labmates, and for the molding and casting metaphor.