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| Food packaging finding friends by color... |
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| Immaculate Lewis Creek debris + evidence of planning |
Students are beginning to find ways to work with this material. It is incredibly challenging for most of them - but if it were easy would it be worth doing or teaching?
What is the point of anything easy? Does it expand our knowledge or understanding of anything?
This process usually become increasingly enjoyable after the cleaning is done. I suspect that will be the case from this point forward for most of the students. Once you land on an achievable goal, it is just a matter of doing the work. Typically it becomes a pleasant meditation at around this juncture.
One of the hardest things I've noticed for many is the idea of "transformation". It is essential. In creating art from debris -- we want to avoid making "sculptures" that are really just garbage put together in the shape of a tree or the shape of a moon or a bird or something else. To really transform the material is the key - taking time with each component to make it worthy of inclusion in an exhibit - to have light shine on it and draw attention to it. A piece of art is a series of decisions you make - open to scrutiny. Every choice you make is a reflection of you as an artist. Making the garbage aspects recede and the art aspects come to the forefront are highly advisable. A rough, torn, tattered background with a refined and lovingly rendered foreground is one solution... that is an interesting option if you have an ambitious project in mind without enough time to refine every component.
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| A practice paper peony! |
I am excited to see what they do.
I am doing my best to provide them with the appropriate tools, conceptual guidance and technical advice. Here is some of what is going on:
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| The satisfaction of using a Dremel to soften rough edges... |
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| Exceptionally organized work area + deconstruction. |
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| A question for all of us to ponder. Why are we here? |
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| May the transformation begin! |
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| An inspired work table. |
Tonight we have a class picnic at Professor Ryan's house. Very nice as there is a lot of pressure in the studio with such little time. An extra week would solve a lot of problems - students really only have 8 days to get their pieces together and there are still many learning curves to traverse. Fortunately, the majority of them don't have any other courses they are taking at the moment and anticipated needing to put a lot of time in the studio. For those projects that are on the overly ambitious side, I am stressing QUALITY over QUANTITY.
Now that a jigsaw and dremel are set up, I hope to see some serious progress in the next couple of days. Save a few who are still working out their basic concepts, I think we are off to a great start.
May the transformations begin!
With this project I hope to make something that means something to me personally, and makes me think about what's going around around the world as well. I want to be globally conscious and be able to make the sculpture mean something to me as well. I would like to make something that's nice to look at as well but that's not my entire end game. I'm not sure entirely which area I'm going in but I know it will have a personal meaning and will spark an interest, and awareness in the viewer.
ReplyDeleteyesterday was harder than any other day I have had in here. I lost myself. Today I came in with a better attitude and with a little guidance I figured out that progress is ok when it moves slowly. I am thinking more clearly and have a better concept of what this project means to me. I cut off bottle bottoms today haha and it felt good to do it.
ReplyDeletethe screening was great!!! it had myself and a few others a little emotional, because it was just so inspiring and uplifting. He gave those individuals their lives back in a way. He gave them opportunity to see the hard work they put in. These people thought they were junk, unwanted, ashamed, worthless and doing endless honest work. He made a statement about perspective and how when up close to a piece u don't fully see the picture clearly. when you are far away from it or take a step back, then the picture becomes more clear and beautiful. So he allowed these individuals to see themselves from afar and they were so amazed at their hard work inside them.
ReplyDeleteThe Bag It screening was great! It was really informative, but also entertaining. I loved that it touched on almost every aspect of "the cycle" that was explained in The Story of Stuff. It also made me more aware of the everyday, plastic objects I use and how toxic they really are. It's scary I did not even realize how our society has grown so accustomed to this single-use "disposable plastic." We are so used to just buying these individually wrapped things, unwrapping it, then throwing the wrapping away, we do not even realize that its harmful and wasteful. I really liked when the movie said "REDUCE what you buy, REUSE what you do buy, and then RECYCLE what you must throw out. I never thought about that saying in that way. This movie was really great.
ReplyDelete