"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.