Posts

When creating this work, I was met with many barriers, starting with part 1 of the project. When making my assemblage for part 1, my limited materials and procrastination left me with very little wiggle room in regards to creativity. I was in my dorm room with only the bare essentials in regards to living and my extracurriculars, unlike if I was at home, where I would have tons of different objects and materials to use for the project. From my dorm, I was able to scrape up some materials, which included a plate, two sponges, four pieces of cardboard from a colorful tissue box, and a illustration which I cut out from a magazine. I used the objects in order to make a piece centered around time and the human relationship with time, but I thought it might have been either too basic due to my decision to create a clock, or too broad due to the lack of a very specific subject matter. The unfortunate thing is, due to procrastination, I was unable to make any changes, and I had to go with what I had.

With part two of my project, I decided to further reinforce the time related subject matter, and aim it more directly at the experience of students in 2020. With part two, I was able to fulfill what I was unable to with part one. Also, due to part two being centered around creating a 3D space, and recording it with a 2D medium (photography), it was way more down my lane. So I was able to create and execute an idea much more easily.

Overall, my experience of working with three dimensional art has broadened my horizons in regards to my “creative vocabulary” and has helped to better take into account and understand the 3D aspects of my 2D work.

For part 2 of project 3, I am leaning further into the concept of humans working against time. For this part of the project, I’m focusing more directly on the experience of students in 2020, and the stress of an education characterized by sitting at your desk while being bombarded with 11:59 deadlines. While this is partially dramatic, the work is not meant to show reality how it is, but it is meant to express how it feels to experience this reality and bring attention to the emotional stress which has been applied to many students during 2020. In order to achieve this, I am creating a set in my room where I am sitting in my chair in fetal position, with many pieces of paper all over my desk, a harsh light aiming directly at me, and a clock in front of my laptop screen. The many pieces of paper will display pictures of my photo from part one, representing the work that students may be feeling overwhelmed with during the semester. The clock in front of the laptop and the photo on the papers are meant to express that the student is overwhelmed by deadlines and minimal help, so they are hallucinating and unable to focus. The hallucination is that when they look at their school work, they just see deadlines (the clock and the photo) and are unable to work.

I imagine this project as either being experienced in person with people being able to walk around the room as the subject sits in the chair as if there is nobody there, or online as a live video that shows the subject sitting in their chair as they constantly spin in it.

I am also unsure of which photo I will use, the second one is from a higher angle and I feel like it shows how a person would see this scene if they walked into the room, but the one has more depth.

I currently have not created a super solid idea but I have one which I’ve thought of very roughly. My original photo dealt with time, and particularly how our existences as living beings are solely based on time, so with my idea for part two of this project, i want to maintain the same theme. My idea is that I will create a photograph by photoshopping many images together in a way in which I can express the activities that go on in a room where work is done, such as a office, dorm, or bedroom (in the case of many students). This image would be able to express the fact that our lives are based on time, and I would be able to incorporate my image by putting the face of one of the guys in the center of my photo over my head (in post, or in the photograph). I would do this because both of the guys in my photo have red dots in the middle of their forehead, and Xs over their eyes, to suggest their figurative or literal position of being held at gunpoint, rather that is by their inevitable death, or a strict deadline that they are rushing to meet.

I think that I have grown a lot from where I began prior to this class. I have a history of working with 2 dimensional media, and this class has definitely been a step into the unknown for me, but I am coming out as a more skilled, thoughtful artist. By thoughtful, I mean that I am more conscious of the dynamics of 3d space, and how it’s manipulation can affect the viewer. I learned this the most with my wire sculpture of my hair brush. This taught me how to use my compositional skills which I’ve developed in photography and graphic design, and apply them to 3d art forms. An example of this is my thought process when finding the best places to form connections, and which parts of my wire culture to put the most effort into, in order to direct the viewer’s eye. Also, in the beginning of this class, I had many frustrations, especially with the wire sculpture, but overcoming those obstacles ultimately is what made me better with the medium.

Originally I was going to create three heads in order to express my point, but now I have decided to take a more conceptual approach. I am changing paths because the heads weren’t practical shapes to make with paper. Now I am going to create a wall with a door and put it on top of a paper pedestal. In order to express the frustration of trying to let out thoughts and translate them into words, I am going to manipulate a large piece of crumpled up paper through the door (as seen in my sketches). The part of the paper that goes through the door will represent the tension and anxiety that may build up in a person when trying to verbally express thoughts and ideas. I got this idea from Professor Schmiegelow, when I was given the idea to leave more of the artwork’s meaning up to the viewer’s interpretation. Now that my artwork is more broad, it will be able to relate to more people, and it will maintain the viewer’s attention more than a very straightforward piece would. (there isn’t much going on in the second picture, but it is the beginning of the pedestal)

For project two, the boundary that I am doing is the boundary between what people think and what people say or express. To convey this message, I am creating three heads out of paper, one representing a child, another representing a teen/young adult, and the last one, representing an adult. The teen and adult figures will have tape over their mouths, with writing on the tape, which explains the kind of filter they have over the thoughts which they let out for other people to hear. For example, the teen might say, “I’m insecure and don’t know who I am, or if what I’m doing is right.”, and the adult would say “I’ve gone down the path of no return, I haven’t found myself, but I have found a place in the world.”. I also may put tape around the adult’s head, in order to signify that their mind is blocked or controlled in some way. The child will have no tape, and instead, I’ll write on its forehead “I am free, but it is only a short time until I’m locked up, as I am destined to be.”. Each of these heads will be lined up, from left to right, youngest to oldest.

In the photos which I am posting, you can see in one picture when I was drawing heads to find proportions, and in the other, you can see my idea written/ drawn  out, along with another idea that I was thinking about but never finished.

Since my last blog post, I have made lots of progress, I currently have the three-dimensional shape of the brush, but now I am tasked with finishing the bristles. I decided to represent the bristles with a piece of wire that I bend back and forth, and then essentially “lock” into place, using a wire fence-esc structure. This part of the process is showing to be the hardest and most time consuming of all because I am using the thicker wire. I decided to use the thicker wire because it has more resistance, therefore when I tangle it into the fence structure, it will stay tightly in its position and maintain shape. 

So far, the main aspect that is showing to be difficult is maintaining structural integrity. In particular, because my structure has no straight edges, it is hard to get certain pieces of the structure to stay in place, especially when building the fence structure that holds the bristles. It was quite hard to wrap the thin wire around a round structure, and I found a way to fix it for the most part, but because of the round nature, there is quite a bit of wiggle room for the thinner wire that makes up most of the “fence” to move around.

Also, I remade one half of the main frame in order to have a stronger link between each side, as you can see in the first picture.

During this week I’ve had a lot of frustrations. I started with an idea of what I wanted to do and now I’m nearly back at square one. I was going to create a sculpture of my hairbrush and then I had the idea of making one of my camera, so I began planning for that, but in that process, I realized how complex my camera is so now I’m very conflicted with the way I will go about things. I currently have the basic frame of my brush and a few sketches of my plan for the camera, and I’m leaning toward accepting the challenge of the camera, so if it doesn’t come out as planned, at least the effort will be prevalent.

The main thing I’ve been having a problem with is just commitment, but I feel like the only way to get past that barrier is to “attack it”, meaning go after one idea and don’t look back. I’m leaning towards the camera because the brush seems to be a bit too simple, and it seems to be quite difficult to add identifiability to that level of simplicity. Also, I’m not a very fast worker when it comes to art, so that’s probably why photography (my main medium) suits me so well, because it forces me to be decisive, but college art classes are really challenging me in that aspect.