#installation final

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After another afternoon collecting adventure, I got some good orange shells and small rocks. Amazingly, I even found two very tiny, dried out crab claws! Too funny! I also picked up some dried dark pink seaweed. When I got home, I thought it would look good with the red-spectrum rocks I had. The smooth rocks and the spiky seaweed look even more fantastic than I imagined! I decided to put some of the black rocks I picked up last weekend in with the nearly black seaweed I got last week. Today, good progress was made!

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My husband and I took another walk to the beach the other day. We focused on rocks of specific colors. I’m thinking about layering the different colors of rocks or possibly separating them into different jars if I can find enough of each color. Perhaps I will, for example, put orange rocks and orange shells together. I’ll have to do more experiments to see which way has the impact I’m going for.

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Finally!! The scaffolding is gone and it is sunny!!!

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Final Project Reflection

When I finally had access to the balcony to put everything in place, I felt like I wanted to add more. However, I also felt the clean simplicity of it was very relaxing. Plus, the small details inside the jars might disappear if there is too much going on around them. I remembered the initial discussion with Professor Furlong about having some jars sitting around the installation and lamented not having collected more objects and jars! With rainy season beginning, the decision was ultimately made for me! I had just one day to photograph it in the sun, so I just went ahead and did it.

Originally, I had wanted to be able to stand inside of the mobile. I considered building some “branches” off the base to create a bigger space between the hanging jars. The space between the big metal pipe and the divider wall wasn’t quite enough, though, so I felt limited there. I noticed that I kept feeling limited, having to reevaluate what was possible for me to do. That seems fitting given the concept of the piece! My life is going to change with the arrival of the baby, and I’ll probably feel limited and a little trapped at first… or for a while.

In the group critique, I got some really good suggestions from my classmates and professor. Several of them were related to building and expanding the environment more around the balcony. If I were to do that, I’d like to bring the installation around behind the chair rather than in front of it. I don’t want to clog up the view from the balcony, but surrounding the chair from behind with more “beach” could create more of a feeling of really being inside the installation. One classmate pointed out that the sea glass chimes got a little lost inside the jars. If I were able to bring them out of the mobile and around the chair, perhaps their sounds would be better heard and they could be admired separately from the mobile. I especially liked the suggestion of having one jar that was interactive and touchable rather than just observable. If I could find a jar that fit in the cup holder on the chair, visitors to the installation could take the top off and play with the contents of that jar.

Moving forward, I think I’d like to spend more time in the experimenting stage than in the ideation stage. I lost some time trying to plan things when there were so many unknowns (like, Would I even be able to use the space I intended to use?). I should have made many different things so that, when I did have access to the space, I had more to work with. I was a little conservative in my creating, because I worried about making something that would be ultimately unusable. Perhaps if I had branched out from my plan, I could have come across something spectacular for the piece.

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From my little corner of captured beach, I can feel the sand(paper) under my feet, see the sea, feel the breeze, and look at shells, seaweed, and other objects collected from the real beach. Of course, I can also see the laundry rod, the stuff on my neighbor’s balcony, and the big honkin’ scaffolding that has yet to come down. Having even a little bit of the beach up here with me, though, is pretty nice. 

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I did decide to make a little pine tree (from painted cardboard) as part of the background for the installation final project. While I hadn’t originally planned to hang the net over top of it, I really liked the way it looked. I had planned to hang the net on the railing, but the the scaffolding was still in place. I didn’t want to risk the net getting in the way of the workers while they took down the scaffolding. I attached pieces of sea glass and pottery I found at assorted beaches around Japan, imagining seeing them swaying in the breeze and shining in the sun. With them against the divider, the effect is different, but I like the depth it created with the pine tree.

What’s with the cinder blocks? Well, they are really there to keep our cat from slipping under the divider and over to our neighbor’s balcony. I considered moving them, but they also reminded me of the concrete flower boxes at the beach. Right now, the park landscapers are in the middle of changing the flowers for summer, so most boxes are empty except for dirt. So, it kinda worked out ;-) 

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Close-ups of the hanging jars!

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Alright! I took one last walk down to the beach this morning and collected a few more things, including some more sand. When I got home, I had fun arranging the last few jars!

I picked up a bunch of trash, too. I had one more big jar and thought about filling it with pieces of plastic. I often pick up trash when I spend the day at the beach, which embarrasses my husband but makes me feel good. However, this piece is really about my idealization of the beach, so the plastic didn't fit. I properly disposed of it all instead. 

Now, I’ll hang everything on the balcony and see what else the installation needs. I want to make sure there’s enough there to create the impact I want!