Sculpture 2

 

Through this piece I wanted to explore how I could make nature and landscapes more simplistic, geometric, and abstract. My vision for this piece was to use the plaster on top of the foam pieces to help create flow and movement in the piece. I wanted to use color to help enhance and better show what the piece was. However I believe my preference of more realistic art got in the way of this piece reaching its full ability. There are a few things I would change about this piece. First off I would have been happier if I could have spent more time in the plaster and truly build up the plaster and the movement within the plaster. Second I would have like to have created a more stable piece that connected better. Lastly, I would have left the piece without color. I believe this would have let the piece be more abstract and let the viewer ponder what it was exactly that they were looking at. Similarly, I believe the colors only muddy the sculpture and make it to literal. 

First Sculpture Piece:

 

Through this piece I explored themes of balance in the negative space but also balance in the structure of the piece, upward motion, and stability. In the theme of balance, I wanted to create a piece that provided negative space. Similarly I have been fascinated and slightly influenced by the artist Alexander Calder and his use of balance in his sculptures. During our class, we discussed the use of motion in the piece and how certain motions can effect the piece. I wanted to have an upward and open motion in the piece to give it a more open and airy feel to it. Lastly one of my main struggles for this piece was stability. I tried a few different ways on how to keep the piece stable and upright and I came upon a simple piece going across the bottom to creat the stability that was needed. 

Personal Project

 In progress photos:

Sustainability Piece

From the beginning of this assignment, I was curious about the effects of plastic and how plastic continuously harms our ocean, but I wanted to find a new and unique way to represent this idea. I remembered hearing Professor Mongiovi discussing and showing our class a traditional net she had created for one of her shows and I was intrigued by this idea. I wanted to find a way to blend these two ideas into a unique and thought-provoking piece. I finally decided that the best way to combine the two ideas would be to collect trash from the beach, clean it, and turn it into strips of weave able material. Once I had collected enough trash, cleaned it, and turned it into strips, I had to figure out how to connect it all and make the trash tie together. It was during this process that I had to change my direction slightly. The trash i had found and was attempting to use would not come together in a neat and clean manner which left the piece looking messy. I reevaluated and realized I personally had several plastic bags and found many plastic grocery bags on the beach. With this, I decided to not use the other trash and focus on using the plastic bags as my yarn-like material to create the net. I enjoyed the rhythmic process of creating this net and ended up making two and tying them together to add more width to the piece. I believe if I were to recreate this piece id like to add a third or fourth net to it to give it even more width and make it even more net-like. 

Surface Design Pattern Piece

 

Dye Experiments

 Dye in-progress photos:

Dye photos:

Gregors Room

 

The Hope within the Despair 

A visual response to the short story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

White copy paper and ink (no adhesives used)

9x9x7 in

The sculpture collection reflects my perception of the short story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Through this short story, I was inspired by how unique and different Gregor's room felt in my mind's eye and how he seemed to be constantly miserable. I wanted to focus on creating a different and sort of odd space for Gregor. I wanted to do this through an odd bed and bedside table. Similarly, I used grungy sort of colors like bruise green, dirty yellow, and browns to help accentuate the unhappiness Gregor experienced. I chose to do slowly rotting apples as my representation of Gregor because at the very beginning of the story he was happy but as the read delves more into the story we slowly see Gregor's panic and general unhappiness. 

In Process Photos: