The Future is in the Past

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PROCESS

The glue is successfully holding up the dice so that the second die is up off of the ground. This piece is complete, except for final photos. I decided to use water color on it because I wanted certain colors that I could not get through the metallic washes, and I did not want to glaze the hand because I wanted contrast between the hand and the dice.

In using water color on this, I experimented and learned. I had not used water color on clay before, and I expected to be able to wipe off the pigment like one can with the metallic washes. It did not work for me, so I had to work with permanent stains and figure out how to create the effect I wanted without being able to wipe away color. This was good to learn, because in the future I will know how water color both looks and behaves on clay.

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this is a mask that I made prior to this year. I might include it for breadth if I do not make another work in the meantime that I think is better

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BARBED WIRE FENCE

COMPLETE PART 2

I am pleased with how the piece itself came out, but I had some difficulty setting up the black background since it’s a widespread piece.

Also, if I have time, I might glue in the nails, because this piece if very fragile right now and the nails come out very easily.

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BARBED WIRE FENCE COMPLETE PART 1

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UPDATED Concentration Statement

In my concentration, I focus on creating physically balanced works. Through the use of limited points of contact, I work to achieve the illusion of motion or stillness in my artworks.

For many of my concentration pieces, I created works that involve or suggest everyday objects, such as forks and matchbooks, because I wanted to create scenes in my pieces that incorporate real elements and yet had an element of surrealism to them. These scenes are representative of captured moments in time. I believe that focusing on the balance of a scene is essential to reproducing the unique and expressive movement or position of objects at a certain point in time. Balance contributes both to the realism of a work and to its tone.

Physical balance is also unique to 3-D works. Before, I worked primarily in 2-D media, and in my concentration I wanted to focus on an aspect of three-dimensional art that does not come into play in two-dimensional art. Creating the balanced structures that I did for my concentration allowed me to explore some of the limits of 3-D art in a way that is entirely new to me and which has helped push my artistic boundaries.

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FINISHED “Your Plate is Full” / “Deja Vu”

I am very happy with how this came out. Originally, I was going to try to have the silverware stand on an empty plate, but later thought of adding in cloth. My teacher helped with the idea for how to ground the silverware to keep them upright, and I very much appreciate his help in that.

This came out exactly how I envisioned once I thought about adding cloth, and I am very happy about that.

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Different set-ups for “Your Plate is Full”

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Friday Blog Post

process pictures from a previous piece

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Projects in Progress:

I need to get a plate for one piece. Originally, i was going to leave the plate empty besides the fork and knife, but now I am going to try two ideas, one with the plate empty and one using scraps of cloth.

I am also going to work on a piece with wine glasses and liquid. I need to experiment with this one to see whether I want to include tissue paper as well.

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Friday Blog Post

some finished photos of this piece, not yet titled:

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Concentration Statement (Rough Draft)

In my concentration, I focus on creating physically balanced works. Through the use of limited points of contact, I work to achieve the illusion of motion or stillness in my artworks.

I created works that involve or suggest everyday objects, such as forks and matchbooks, because I wanted to capture specific moments of life in my pieces. I believe that focusing on the balance of a scene is essential to capturing the unique and expressive movement or position of objects at a certain point in time. Balance contributes both to the realism of a work and to its tone.

Physical balance is also unique to 3-D works. Before, I worked primarily in 2-D media, and in my concentration I wanted to focus on an aspect of three-dimensional art that does not come into play in two-dimensional art. Creating the balanced structures that I did for my concentration allowed me to explore some of the limits of 3-D art.

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some fanart i’m doing of the ghost rider. i haven’t worked with pens for a while, and this is the first time i’ve used the felt-tip for a drawing like this. i don’t know if i’ll finish, but i would like to complete his jacket and add the spikes and chain, and finish his fire

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Friday Blog Post

Progress on “Phillumeny”

My idea to use the matchbooks to hold up the hand seems to be working. It’s hard to gauge just how many matchbooks i need for the column itself because the glue dries rather slowly, but it is coming along well.

I have also started glazing the mask of my clay figure, so that should be finished soon.

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AP Art Current Progress Video

The video file is too big to be uploaded to tumblr, so it is here on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/199931542

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Mini Semester Blog Post 3

My favorite short story we read today was the one about the man waking up in a coffin. The setting and first few sentences were very interesting and made me want to read more. I actually liked the short story less as it went on, but I still enjoyed it.  It had an interesting twist, and to me it seemed like a different take on a kind of ghost story. To the men who ran away, I think it must have seemed like a horror story, with the lightning flashing and the man sitting up from his coffin so casually and calmly, while the audience knew that there was nothing supernatural occurring. This irony added to the story, especially when the third man delivered the corpse despite the man having been alive.

I think if I were to draw inspiration from this story, I would focus on the scene with the lightning and the man rising so apathetically from his grave, or on the very opening of the story, in which the man wakes up in his coffin and is not convinced that he is dead. Both of these scenes stood out to me more than any other scene in the story.

In the Brothers Grimm tale, my favorite part was the fact that each object had its own unique personality. The coal was hot-headed, the straw was helpful, and the bean made speeches and laughed at the death of its comrades. This made the story unique and added interest to an otherwise simple origin story for the black line on beans.

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Mini Semester Post 2

I think the man’s art about having his friends describe him is very interesting, but I do not think it proves the point he was trying to make. He used his art to show that slavery still has prominent effects in modern times, which is a completely valid statement; however, I disagree with his method of supporting this claim. He had his friends describe him as though he had gone missing, and they needed to create a missing poster for him. His friends described his physical characteristics, such as his race, gender, height, and hair style. This description was similar to runaway slave posters, however, I do not think that they were similar because of underlying biases—I think that they were similar because both descriptions had the same goal of identifying and locating a missing person. If I were to go missing, my friends and family would also describe me by my physical characteristics. They would say that I am a white female, that I am 5’4”, and that I have brown hair that goes just past my shoulders. This is a similar type of description to the description the artist’s friends gave, and yet I am Caucasian, and a history of American slavery does not likely have an impact on a description of me.

Thus, while the statement the artist makes is valid, I do not think he can prove it through his method of gathering descriptions of himself in such a way. If he had simply asked his friends to describe him, and they focused solely on his physical descriptions, then he would have more of a compelling argument. However, since he specifically asked his friends to describe him as though he had gone missing, I do not believe that their focus on his physical self—and the similarities that his description had to those of other men of his race in the past—actually shows that a history of slavery had any impact on how his friends described him.

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Mini Semester Blog Post 1

I liked most of the text-based artwork we viewed in class. I think that the reason that I and many of my classmates liked the black-and-white art less as we saw more of it is because at first, the dropping of letters in a word to make another word seemed very clever and seemed to offer deep insight into the artist’s thought process and worldview. However, once it became clear how many similar works the artist had done, it seemed more like clever wordplay, and less like meaningful and expressive art. However, I think that it is unfair to assume that these works of art are not very significant to the artist simply because there are a lot of them. I think that the works would lose some value if it turned out that they were simply concepts and wordplay that the artist was playing around with, but it is entirely possible that deep thought was put into each and every work, or that they have some meaning that is not obvious simply by looking at photographs of each work for a few minutes.

Likewise, I think that the “LIVE” work that used shadows is interesting, but that it would hold more value to me if I knew the artist’s specific intent or thought process. I like to know the meaning behind artworks, although sometimes the intent behind pieces is to allow the audience to draw their own conclusions. In those situations, I think that artwork is best viewed without explanation, although I think that historical context or knowledge about the artist still adds to the overall effect of an artwork.