I'd call this a breakthrough, but I don't want to jinx it...

So, over the last few weeks I
1. made 3-d work that has potential, and that I loved making
2. made 2-d work that has potential, and that I loved making

Great, right? But I have a senior show coming up in 1 week, and I wanted to put all-new 2-d and 3-d work in it, and, although my work was related inside my head, it was not related visually.

I think these new pieces are closing in on what I need:

I found a brush tip marker that I filled with alcohol, which allowed me to make deliberate marks and have more control. The curvy, thorny shapes of the brushwork are similar to the shapes in my new sculpture.
I have no images of the sculpture yet, but I think I thought of an interesting way to bring it closer to my thesis AND closer to my 2-d work.

I'm also working on finding titles for these pieces, and how to mount them on the gallery wall.
Stay tuned!
 P.S.  If anyone had any title ideas they would like to share with me, please let me know! I'm keeping my mind open to new ideas for as long as possible... 

The Sculpture That Forgot Its Own Name

My thesis-related work has ruled my thoughts and actions for quite a while now. This quarter, my studio classes include Drawing, Sculpture, and Woodworking. I wasn't sure I could force wood to apply to my thesis, so I decided to relax a bit, and just focus on picking up some skills and making some interesting forms. It would be nice, for a change, to just think about beauty as the sole raison d'être.

Our first assignment was to build a wood steamer. Our first project had to be built with bent wood; steaming is one of the simplest ways to soften wood for bending.  While we were figuring out some technical issues with the steamer, I came up with a simple sketch for my sculpture. It resembled a sort of nest, with a circular base and several curved, tapered branches reaching out of the base and meeting in a tangle a few feet above.

This is the original sketch, doodled during a lecture class. The term at the bottom, tertium quid, literally means "the third thing."  It refers to the whole which is greater than the sum of its parts, and it was the first title of this piece. In the top right corner, I wrote "onion, solar flare, brain cell;" I researched all of those three forms while refining my sketch.

Meanwhile, Matt, our teacher, taught us how to laminate wood into curved forms. Basically, you plane down wood into thin strips (about an 1/8 inch thick is good). Then you slather the strips with wood glue, and quickly stack them up and bind them together (Matt used cut up strips of old bicycle tires). Then, while the glue is still wet, the wood is bent around some sturdy, curved form and clamped into place. As soon as the glue dries, the wood is ready to be unclamped, unwrapped, and sanded down to remove the crusty glue.
I decided to use this technique for the base of my sculpture, because I could make it sturdy and solid enough to drill holes into, to hold the tapered wood forms, kind of like candlesticks pushed into a candlestick holder.

We also learned about another technique to bend wood, which just involves soaking the wood in a solution of water and fabric softener. This method appealed to me, because I could work on it at home, by soaking the wood in my bathtub. I bought a bunch of dowel rods, of varying widths and lengths, and began soaking them overnight in batches. I bent them, still damp, into bowed shapes and tied them with twine. Once they were dry, I was able to soak them again, by immersing them halfway in a bucket of the same solution, and bend the ends back the other way. This way, I was able to get some really nice, elegant S-curves. Which smelled like fresh laundry.

Then, while all this productive work was happening, BAM, I had a seizure. It had been a really long time since my last seizure, and I forgot how much it really, really sucks. I won't go into detail, but suddenly my perspective on my thesis work became much more focused.
The next time I saw the sketch I had made for my sculpture, I accidentally glanced at it upside-down.

Once I decided to flip it upside down, I also re-drew a portion of the main hoop so it was open, not closed.

It looked like a basket with the bottom torn out. It looked empty, and strange, and it reminded me of my head right after the seizure. I decided to suspend the sculpture, upside-down, and hang it from invisible string. I also decided to not close the laminated hoop. I decided to cut a gap in it, like an opening or gateway into the basket-like shape.

The time-consuming task of tapering the dowel rods took over my life for a few days. I probably should have bought some specific hand tool to make my job easier, such as a spoke-shaver or a scraper. Instead, I developed a tedious process of hand-sanding each rod, then sharpening it to a rough point on the disc sander. Then, I used a whittling knife to refine each point.  I sanded the points smooth, with a rough sanding block. Finally, I polished each ivory-smooth with fine sandpaper.

When it came time to assemble the sculpture, I rubbed beeswax into each separate part, because I didn't want to use some stinky varnish, and I didn't want to alter the appearance of the wood too much. I drilled the holes very slowly and deliberately, deciding the placement of each rod very carefully.

It was important to me that the finished form had some of that beauty that I originally aimed for. The meaning of the piece had changed in my head, and had, despite my intentions, become related to my thesis. The emptiness, the thorniness, and the paleness of it were all somehow perfectly descriptive of my own scary emptiness moments after the seizure. By keeping it beautiful, I think I was trying to edge out the despair with some hope, or peace, or something. It may sound corny, but I don't know how else to explain it.

 So, the title of my sculpture is It Forgot Its Own Name. This title refers to two different but complementary ideas.
First: Matt and I were discusing the amount of "spring-back" that wood has. Some might call it "memory;" it's the ability of wood to recover its shape when it has been bent. For a living tree, this is necessary for survival. The more a tree bends and recovers, the more interesting its grain can become. But, since I was working with cut, dried wood, I was able to bend it and have it maintain the bend, with only a little spring-back. I was altering or erasing its "memory." But, the essential wood-ness remains; it might "forget" how it grew, but it still exists as proof of its growth.
Second: The title is a reference to the memory loss I feel right after a seizure. Not only do I not remember my own name, I don't even remember that I ever had a name to forget. Luckily, this feeling doesn't last, because it's absolutely awful.

This was, I think, the best show I've been in. The rest of the work was amazing,
so of course I took pictures:

Unidentified Mammal Skeleton #1, by Marty Rossman. This is one of the best pieces in the show (in my opinion); it is very well lit and eye-catching.

Undulate, by Meredith Waddell.  Meredith bent her wood with a different method, which involved rocking the thin strips of damp wood back and forth over a propane-heated pipe. Her piece is very striking in person; when you look at it head-on, the stripes of wood look perfectly straight.

Step On Me, by Jeff Badger. Jeff curved thin pieces of wood by steaming them and clamping them to the insides of trashcans while they dried. Then he cut them up into these chips, which look like skin cells to me, and laid them out on the floor in a large frame. Simple, but good.

Pete and Repeat, by Daniel Lawson. This was one of the largest pieces in the show; Daniel definitely bent the largest pieces of lumber. I like that there is so much grace and delicacy, but it's still really rough lumber.

These sculptures, and others, were all installed in the Meyers Gallery last week. I wanted to include pictures of some of my favorites, and to show the incredible variety of approaches among my classmates.

Installation Final!

Closeup of the center ball.

We got the space we wanted! We (myself, Daniel, and Steve) installed this in the smaller room of the 840 Gallery last weekend. We spent several hours over the last few weeks making string orbs of various sizes. The largest, shown above, was about eighteen inches in diameter. The smallest, below, was about four inches across.

We used about 12,000 feet of string, about 35 eye hooks, and over a gallon of glue

Check out my post from a few weeks ago, called The PROTO Show, if you want to see how this all got started.

View from the back corner. There was string right in front of the camera.

I loved the shadows cast on the wall

A view from below.

Looking down, at an eye hook in the concrete floor.

We spent about fourteen hours installing this on Sunday, and then two more hours on Monday to finish up and set up the lighting.

So... what does it all mean? My original idea was to create a 3-d abstraction of the inside of the brain, where memories are stored. Each orb represents a specific memory. They are all different sizes, and can be reached easily or with difficulty, depending on their placement within the room. Some are well lit, almost glowing, while others are in shadow. They are all connected to the environment and to each other. Some of the connections are strong, others are tenuous. As we tightened the string in one direction, something else would loosen and sag, so we had to constantly pull and push new connections between the orbs.
The memory theme is important to me, because it's part of my thesis, so I'm glad my collaborators were okay with sticking with my idea. I'm also glad they wanted to work with me, because I never could have drilled into the concrete on my own (thanks Daniel!) or come up with such beautiful lighting (thanks Steve!). Plus, I wouldn't have been able to torture them with my music choices for fourteen hours straight, which was fun. How was I supposed to know they wouldn't like They Might Be Giants?

the PROTO show

Final projects for installation class are due in just a couple weeks (gasp!) and our teacher, Matt Lynch, decided it would be super-fun to squeeze in a gallery show (he has an entertaining knack for this- I assume it's his way of preparing us for last minute opportunities that arise in the "real" world).

Matt found these lovely old flashcards with Proto brand tools on them; this image inspired the name of our show

The class decided that rather than choose a completely new idea, which would take a lot of working time away from our final projects, that we could display prototypes of our final work. These prototypes might vary between miniatures, maquettes, Photoshopped images, and works in progress. Ideally, they would stand as more than just sketches, and have artistic merit of their own.

The flyer I designed for the show. Nice and simple.

I am collaborating on this project with two other students: Daniel Lawson, with whom I've collaborated on several projects, and Steve Shack, a new friend who has brought a unique set of skills from his experience as a set builder and lighting technician at the music/performing arts college (CCM).

The Big Idea:

The idea for our (final) project is to fill a room with miles of lovely white cotton string. The string is a metaphor for memory. Some areas will be tangled and tight, others will be loose and fraying. Connections will vary between random and deliberate. Some areas will be completely obscured by string while others are sparse and open.

We wrapped various canvases in string and secured them to the wall. We see these blank canvases as portals, like the eyes and ears, which allow information into the mind, while the web of string represents the connections made in our minds as memories are formed. I think. It's just a prototype, people.

So, for our Proto project, we had a small corner of the 840 gallery to ourselves. We took advantage of a well-placed spotlight because we liked the shadows the string made on the wall.

Close-up! We made those egg shapes by wrapping Mod-Podge soaked string around balloons, allowing it to dry, then popping and removing the balloons. Thanks mom, for teaching me that technique years ago  :).

I'm not sure what the egg shapes are supposed to represent. We really liked the shadows that they created on the wall.

 It will be interesting to see how we re-use these elements in our final project. The awesomeness of this proto-project is that we worked through a LOT of technical issues and artistic concepts, so our final piece will be a lot stronger.
I love that we used cheap raw materials which will be re-used in future projects. Our budget for our final installation will be less than twenty dollars each. REALLY CHEAP!

I recorded a terrible little video. I said I wasn't good with technology, didn't I? We liked the shadows that were created when we spun one of our little string balloons in front of the spotlight.

Curio

Installation Studio Class: Project 1

What the heck is installation art? I get asked that a lot, especially when I'm whining to my non-artist friends about my workload this quarter.  Installation is a specific genre of three-dimensional, site-specific work designed to transform a viewer's perception of the space. Installations can be permanent or temporary, indoors or outdoors. This type of work is totally outside of my comfort zone, so I may have been crazy to sign up for this class.

Imagine my delight, when at 8 a.m. on the first day of class I learned that I would be doing a group project for Installation Studio. For those of you who are sarcasm-challenged, this was NOT good news. (Group projects are scarier for art assignments than for any other kind of work!)

Groups were chosen at random, and I was thrown together with three strangers: Megan, Daniel, and Jessie. We were the only group that had complete freedom as far as location of our piece. We quickly chose a site: the giant atrium in Tangeman University Center. This huge building is sort of the center of campus- like the food court at the mall.

Our first thought was something like "Crap! How are we gonna build something large enough to fill this space?"
Which was quickly followed by the idea of putting something very SMALL in the large space, to emphasize the extremes of dimensions. There's a huge, 30' red carpet in the atrium; we thought of putting something small in the middle, then surrounding it with fancy stanchions so people couldn't get close to the small object. The idea would be to get people to think it must be really valuable and to engage their curiosity.  BUT the object is actually ordinary, simple, and plain- an apple!
We chose a site and a concept so quickly and so easily that I felt sure that problems would start once we got down to work.

We started by discussing our respective strengths. Megan and Jessie are into ceramics, Daniel is into sculpture, and I'm into 2-D. Not only was it nice to know we had a wide range of abilities, we also had access to a wide range of free materials, because we had all paid various lab fees in our other studio classes. Aren't we smart? So Jessie and Megan made the apples, I made the hand-printed signs, and Daniel built the pedestal for the apple. We all worked on building the stanchions. Daniel and I cut and forged steel rods, while Megan and Jessie set them in plaster. We painted each of the stanchions black. We all worked on making the velvet rope, and we all assembled the piece on site. WE ALL WORKED. Weird, huh?

Curio from above

This shot shows one of my signs with the installation in the background

This is Saturday, right after we installed it; nothing's protecting the apple yet

For the critique on Monday, we made a velvet pillow and encased the apple in glass.

Close-up of the velvet rope. We made these out of lengths of pipe insulation, less than a dollar apiece!

These are the extra apples, which we handed out to classmates during the critique.

I made 30 hand-printed apples, and hung them throughout DAAP in the weeks before our installation. We wanted people to be curious, and it worked! Everyone wanted to know what was with all of the apples! Lots were stolen, which was fine with us- it meant that our apple had gained value. I made color copies of these apples and continued to hang them.

I made these signs with wood-block printing also- we hung them throughout DAAP and TUC. They are deliberately vague and simple- we wanted people to be uncertain about what exactly Curio meant.

The grungy bulletin board outside the sculpture studio got the first sign and apples- I wanted Matt, the professor, to see that we were following through with our plan to promote the project. (He seemed skeptical that we would actually do so much work so far before the due date.)

This apple hangs high above the DAAP cafe. I tried to put them in unusual places, where they would be noticed.

 Interesting development:  we joked that it would be sort of funny if our porcelain apple got stolen. We kind of hoped it would happen, because it would mean that our goal worked- we had assigned the apple so much value by displaying it the way we did that someone wanted to steal it.
Well, it worked- someone stole it and left a ransom note, of sorts. I scanned it.

If any of you want to tweet a message, to help solve the mystery, feel free. So far, we've made no progress.

 Another fun development: around DAAP, where there are still apple prints hanging on the walls, someone hung paper caterpillars behind them, as if the caterpillars were about to eat the apples. I haven't gotten a good picture yet, but if I do, I'll post one here. I'm hoping someone else will make paper birds to eat the caterpillars.
Curio went so well that three of us have decided to work together for the next project, even though we had the option to work alone.