Paper Stacking

Objective:
Observation through sight and touch as well as invention and development of individual idea. Introduce subtractive and additive processes.

Materials:
Four sheets of Rives gray paper, wood glue, scissors, exacto, a vegetable or fruit for observation purposes

So once again it was Chelsea vs. Paper. I'd like to think the battle was a tie. The paper won round one but victory was mine in round two!

This project began with painfully cutting out shape after shape after shape from the thick rives paper. Scissors, exacto knife, box cutter; it didn't matter what I used. My hands were killing me. After cutting all the pieces out I glued and stacked them. The final shape was very strange looking. I started using sand paper because power tools are a little bit scary and I've heard horror stories about the sander. Eventually my hand cramped from holding the stacked paper form and my other hand began to burn from sanding it with sand paper for so long. Although my intention was to make an orange the paper decided it wanted to be a hybrid orange lemon, or lorange. I accepted the defeat only because my hands could not take the pain any longer.

Round two was much more successful for me. I started off with a shell my boyfriend gave me. That made me think of a fish. So I cut out a fish shape and started stacking. But just a fish wouldn't be that interesting. I cut a rectangular slit in the middle of the fish a glued a vertical paper structure in the shape of seaweed into it. After that, the structure looked a little unbalanced. I made more rectangular slits on each fin and glued on more seaweed. Only these pieces arc and fold into the center piece. This piece makes me think of the ocean and how mysterious it is. It makes me think about how many things in nature can look like one thing but be something completely different, or hide within another creature. I painted this piece with shades of green and blue to reflect a beachy and somewhat mysterious feel.

Experimental Drawings

Janine Antoni Response

After watching the video about Janine Antoni I have decided she is very dedicated to her work. She thinks deeply about her art, every piece has a story behind it and nothing is really as simple as it first appears. She uses her body as a material in many pieces. She used her hair as paintbrush, she dipped herself in a tub of lard, and made many molds of herself for various pieces. What she does seems a little out there to me. But at the same time her art becomes very personal. She's a very artistic thinker, the surface is not the end to her art. I can't imagine using my body in the ways she uses hers to create art. She is very dedicated to her pieces. 

Touch, A Natural History of the Senses-Response

This a response to Touch by Diane Ackerman. This reading was very eye opening. Many points were brought up about things that I haven't really thought about. It's things we know but not things we think about knowing. I agree with the line "language is steeped in metaphors of touch". We describe things with touching adjectives, we say we lost touch with people when we haven't talked to them in a while, and say something touched us when we care about it. These are things I didn't think about. I thought it was just how we talk, I didn't realize the expressions really had origins. Ackerman describes care for premature babies in one section that seems to last forever. Why she felt it was so significant I'm still not sure. It wasn't until the last two sentences that I think I really got what she was saying. She brings up that information is usually communicable in a touch and that other senses have organs you can focus on but touch is everywhere. Thinking about it, this is true. Eyes see, noses smell, tongues taste, but touch gives a lot of information. Touch tells us how to know what things look like. We've touched a hat so we know its round. We've touched water so we know its wet. That is mainly what I took away from this reading. Without touching things we wouldn't know about them. We could see them but without touching them we wouldn't know their true shape; how big they are, how thick or thin they are, how light or heavy they are. This reading opened my eyes to something so simple. It made me think about things I normally wouldn't. Before the reading I didn't think twice about an orange being round. But now I realize that I know an orange is round because I've touched an orange, I've felt the curves and roundness and true shape of the orange that my eyes alone couldn't tell me. Touch by Diane Ackerman is a very profound and eye-opening read.

Poetic Metamorphosis-Sculptures

Assignment:
Using only white copy paper (do not use card stock) make three paper sculptures. The three paper sculptures are to represent the setting discussed in The Metamorphosis and will be miniature.  The three sculptures are: a bed, a chest (or container, box, drawers, etc...)  and a bug.  The bed should contain the following elements: a mattress, a box spring, a bed frame that elevates it from the floor, a headboard and at least one pillow and one blanket.  The chest should be designed so that it can conceal the bug. This assignment uses limited materials and does not allow the use of tape or glue. Final solution should be stable and visually communicate your response to the readings.
 Materials:
White copy paper, ink set, brushes, scissors, Exacto knife, cut matt.

Truth be told, this assignment kicked my butt! For a week I cut and folded paper. It ripped, it crinkled, it broke, it was the wrong size. Anything you can think of, that's what happened. Here's a few pictures of my failed attempts. Any tree huggers beware, I'm pretty sure I cut down a forest with this one! 

 The bug was probably the easiest piece for me. It was definitely challenging, but the least challenging of the three pieces. When reading   The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka I couldn't get a clear picture of the bug. I just saw kind of an awkward shape with wings, little arms, and a stinger in the back. I rolled up a piece of paper, and tucked a small tab into a slit I made. Then i rolled some dampened paper to make the stinger and arms. I cut out small wings from dampened paper.

I used a grey sharpie to color the wings, arms, and stinger. I used a black sharpie and black drawing ink to color the body of the bug.

The next step was the chest or box. Although the story described a large and heavy chest I kept imagining a small box. I made this by drawing out squares and cutting them out and then putting the sides together with small tabs.

I used brown ink and brown sharpie to add color and texture to the box. I made the lid of the box a little big so it doesn't close all the way. This represents how the family wants to hide their bug turned kin but they still know he's there. Likewise, he tries to hide himself but wants to keep in touch with them in an indirect way.

The final and certainly most difficult of the pieces was the bed. I envisioned a simplistic bed with a wood frame. The story is kind of old, so I pictured something similar to the furniture my grandma has. I folded and ticked paper to make the bed frame and added a head board with more paper folded and stuffed with more paper. The box spring and mattress were made the same way as the bed frame.

I used brown ink for the bed frame and headboard. The mattress and box spring were colored with blue ink. The blanket and pillow were colored with green ink. The colors are bright because the bug made me think of a forest and nature and outdoorsy feelings. The blanket came out to be sort of tye dye looking which was unintentional but I decided to keep it because tye dye is like a transformation of colors. Just like how the story was about a transformation from human to bug.

Experimental Drawing

Memento

Assignment:
-Make a non-representational sculpture of a memory. For example, a person, place or event. Use no more than three materials. No less than two materials. 
-Be aware of the materials you select, methods used to construct and the juxtaposition of the materials.
-Final solution should be able to fit in the palms of your hands (or two hands).
Materials:
-balsa wood
-blue ink
-blue paper clips

I decided to make my memento based on my grandfather who passed away last summer.He was a very crafty man, something I didn't know until after he passed away. He was a great construction worker, builder, and sculptor.

I began this project with a small rectangle of balsa wood. I cut up little blocks of balsa wood and left them rough on the edges and barely touched with ink to represent the in progress and unfinished works I always saw around my grandfather's house. I glued these blocks onto one side of the rectangle base.

After that I cut up more blocks of balsa wood but painted these and made sure the edges were mostly clean cut to represent the different finished projects my grandfather had made that I didn't know where his original pieces. These blocks were glued onto the opposite side of the rectangle base.

 

Then I linked blue paper clips together. I pushed on end of the first paper clip into one of the finished blocks and then wrapped the paper clip chain around the unfinished blocks and then to the finished blocks. The paper clips represent the link that I was missing to fully understanding the life my grandfather had. It wasn't until after his death that I was able to link all the unfinished works I had seen to the great pieces I didn't know where his.

The project is mostly blue because my grandfather had really amazing blue eyes. They always had a special twinkle to them.  This is what I thought was the final piece.

 

After looking at it more and with some feedback, I decided to build up the completed side a bit more. I cut more wood blocks and painted them blue. I stacked them neatly and made what looks sort of like a door frame. The door frame shape represents the buildings my grandfather made. The blue blocks are higher than the unfinished blocks to represent that it was a big realization that my grandfather was a great artist, something I didn't know until after he passed away.

Experimental Drawing