"Lost Faces / Wild Aces"

I've been working with this ruby material a lot for my screen printing class. I'm not exactly sure what it's called, but you start with a full sheet of ruby and excise the pieces away until you have the image you want. This image was composed of 5 different films. I wanted it to be a kind of thing where they would be more of a disambiguation when separate, but could be compiled into a skull. It would have been nice to try to depict this somehow with my presentation in class.

It's nice to be getting a feel for what I like and what I want to make as an artist. I feel like it shows when I'm more proud of a piece. I think it exudes that in the final product.

"Unseen Places"

I wanted my piece to be a little more abstract this week. Instead of depicting a place that was actually "unseen," or a place that I hadn't seen before, I instead implied it with an element of something new I had experienced. That way, it wasn't like, "this is a place," but more, "I'm taking you to a place you haven't seen either, and a place you can't very well distinguish.

I guess I was going more for implying memory. The layering and the complexity was meant to hint at the sort of vagueness with which I'd look back on my experience. The mind's tendency to latch to specific details and to let go of more obvious details. Like I said in class, I was pretty happy with this piece, and I think it was a lot better than my spray painted piece.

I'm still struggling with how to let myself into my artwork more. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to making my pieces look finessed and very formally executed. I think that flaws are bad. But at the same time, the flaws are what make the pieces mine, aren't they? How do I find a happy medium? How do I connect to that very flawed and human part of myself while still catering to my neuroses?

"Overheard Conversations"

"Ugh, I can't get through a day without having a glass of wine," said the woman in the booth behind us. My friends and I exchanged bemused looks. Not only was it only 2:00 p.m., but we were also in Oak Park. It's a tiny upper-middle class bubble just north of Los Angeles, where everyone drives Cadillac Escalades and drinks tons of Starbucks. Don't get me wrong, it was an amazing place to grow up, I just couldn't imagine how anyone in Oak Park could have so many issues that they needed wine to medicate every day. Then again, maybe she's just so bored that she doesn't know what else to do.

I decided to shatter a wine bottle and put it back together. I don't want to project some weird undertones about alcoholism onto this piece, although I definitely think that there might be an issue when you need wine to get through the day.

These are the kinds of sculptures I love doing though. Manipulation. I wasn't trying to put it back together as a wine bottle, but using the pieces to make it into something else entirely. When I enjoy it like this, I think I'm more happy with the product as well.

"Open"

Like I said, I really wanted to do a piece about being open on the operating table. There's something really weird about knowing that someone's hands have been inside you. I know that sometimes I get some gruff for interpreting the words too literally, but I find that rooting my concepts in abstraction usually makes them worse. I think being literal is what works best for my creative process. And of course, there are plenty of definitions of the word "Open" that are much more conventional than the drawing I made.

I did think that the comments about the time period were interesting, and I still can't decide if it's the way I copied the image, the way I rendered the drawing, or my choice to use an extremely limited color palette. Also, I'm not sure if that bothers me or not. I agree that there are parts of the drawing I felt more confident in, though, and focusing on the actual shape of the object would have been a nice touch.

"Rise, Follow"

I like to manipulate things. Most of my sculpture work is not about carving or reduction, and not always about building things either (although I do end up building something in the process). My favorite thing to do is to manipulate something into something else. When we got the words for the week, I thought that both words were very attached to human behavior, and I wanted to convey that somehow.

I used colored paperclips to help convey the human form: red and bue blood vessels, veins, arteries, white bones, the pink brain. The coors were too vibrant, though, and I didn't quite achieve what I wanted too. I was still pretty happy with how he looked, though. I also don't think the success of the piece is dependent on everyone else seeing it the same way I do. I made it with one intention, but it doesn't mean it's incapable of inhabiting other intentions as well.

"Hold"

I was really interested in making a piece where something was actually suspended midair. I had been deconstructing this chain-link fence for a project in my advanced sculpture and and installations class, and I thought the wires would make great supports. I rescued a block of wood from another class, and that was kind of the concept for the piece.

When some of the other people in the class said it might be better without the block, I took it out to see what it would look like...

Personally, I kind of still liked it with the block of wood in there. It gave it mass in my opinion. But then again, taking out the block makes the piece a lot more conceptual. What I liked best about the piece as a whole, though, is that it looked like a little creature. I was trying to avoid it at first, but by the end of our time together, he had grown on me. I mean, as long as I'm having fun, I think the work that comes out of it is a good thing. And always an exploration.

"Lead"

I really wanted to use paint as a medium, and I thought this would be a good piece to do so. Since I’m so uncomfortable with oils/ acrylics/ watercolors, I thought I’d try to approach this work with some leftover acrylic spray paint I had. The intention was to use the frame from my “Shape” project as a means of leading the paint into a pattern it wouldn’t otherwise achieve. Additionally, I decided to “lead” with a different color for each portion of the piece. First a black background with yellow/orange on top, then an orange background with yellow/black on top. I liked how the project turned out, but as I expressed in class, it didn’t have quite the profound affect on the respective portions that I was hoping it would. That’s when I added the gridded mesh.

I also tend to agree with those who said my hand wasn’t really evident in the work. Anyone else could have achieved the same result with the same tools. I guess that’s been one of my greatest struggles, mostly because I’m not entirely sure what my identity as an artist is yet, which makes it hard to stick to.

"Move"

This was a little harder for me, because I wanted to craft an adequate portrayal of the word "move" without it being too obvious. I started with a pretty obvious drawing tool, a walking motion cycle, but once I sketched it out, I decided to ink the lines in a colored pattern, and I thought it added a really nice dynamic quality to the piece. I also added the skirt on a whim at the last second as kind of an afterthought, and I think it was a pretty successful additions. I always like to think that the most impulsive decisions can have the biggest payoffs.

"Shape"

For this week, I wanted to use a staunch and familiar shape to create a shape that was more organic and aesthetically pleasing. If I had more time, I probably would have added more wire of the same color, just to build mass and add to the effect. I also thought that hanging the frame a bit from the wall would add a dynamic sort of interaction, with the wires and the shadows from the wires projecting onto the wall. tony told us not to consider the verb shape, and not just the noun, and I enjoyed that the manipulation of wire around the different sides of the frame demonstrated that duality.

"Reach"

For this piece, I kind of decided to do the exact opposite of the previous week. I wanted to kind of used a more literal interpretation of the word “Reach,” just to see the contrast between last week’s and this week’s pieces. However, I also didn’t want to use some sort of inspirational platitude to achieve the image, so I tried to steer the narrative of my image in a darker and more dismal direction. I think the charcoal medium lent itself to this mood.

"Lift"

I really wanted to use a different interpretation of the word "Lift." I didn't want to think of elevators or action verbs or anything related. For this one, I actually went through the dictionary definitions until I stumbled onto the plastic surgical term. And I thought it was a great concept, because it's probably the most contemporary definition of the word.

I liked that Tony point out that my personal pen markings were imperfect and haphazard, because I really think it contrasts the theme of attempting to achieve perfection with a total ambivalence toward error and mistake.

"Touch"

I made this hand out of office supplies a while back. I hadn't really intended on making a hand, but i went to this place in San Francisco called SCRAP (Scrounger's Center for Reusable Art Parts), and I found some materials that made me excited. Some round, metal rim that reminded me of a palm, and a little gadget that looked like it came from a can opener, but would serve as a wonderful thumb.

From, there, I spent hours with just some pliers and all my office supplies and slowly twisted everything into the finished product. I was most happy with the opposable thumb.