Projects

I figured I'd wait until I got all my latest art projects done and post them all at once. Today is the last day of the semester, which is very exciting. I just finished my math final (please send good luck thoughts my way!) and later today I have another sculpture meeting to finish up the critique (I think I'd rather stick a fork in my eye- crits in this class aren't much fun). Yesterday I had the day off, it was so nice to sleep in and veg on the couch. I also got a little crafty time in! Woo hoo! Anyhow, I apologize for the lousy photos, I just didn't feel like schlepping my projects to a better place to obtain a lovelier background.


I kinda struggled with some of these projects, it can be real hard to force creativity when the project goals aren't that great. I felt kinda bound. I'm kinda getting tired of doing stuff cause I have to- I think stuff that I want to create on my own is much more interesting (go figure). Art schools get a bad rap cause they're more about doing stuff/getting grades then really exploring creativity. I think I'd have to agree some this semester.

For the final project in Drawing II, you had to convey an idea using 2 or 3 pieces. I liked using non-art materials in the last project (the frosting drawing) and decided to go with that. My series is called "Man-made Environment" and I replicated two nature scenes (from photos) using trash. These are fairly large (20x30- I can't carry around anything much larger!) but the idea would be conveyed better with these materials if they were much larger.

A seascape of garbage bags:

And trees made of paper towels and brown paper bags:

On to Sculpture class: Our second projects were either to be 1) a block of plaster carved into an abstract shape, or 2) a project entitled "Me" that represented you somehow. Since I hate touching plaster with a passion and that really wasn't that creative of an option, I went with the "Me" project. I decided to make a "Carousel of Me" where each horse represented a different art discipline that I enjoy: drawing, painting, sculpture, sewing, paper arts, and photography. It's made of a cardboard base with a paper mache skin that I painted.

Photo, sewing, drawing horses:

Not a good pic of the photo horse, but it was made of photos of carousels and I cut negatives to make a mane and tail.



Sculpture (tried to carve a block of foam, not great), painting, and paper(made of punched butterfly shapes) horses

I got fairly good reviews during critique, but was criticized that the meaning wasn't entirely clear. When you have to make something really specific about yourself, what do you expect? I liked my carousel but I'm not entirely pleased with the horses. I ran out of time and they were kinda thrown together. I may redo it for my pleasure.

On Wednesday I had a critique for the last project, where you had to convey a "journey" of some kind. My teacher and I discussed stuff and came to the conclusion that this project should be more sculptural (instead of such a recognizable object like the carousel) and not sit flat on a base (like the carousel) since having some negative space in there makes it immediately more interesting. I was inspired by the journey our mind takes to form ideas. I purposely made this sculpture much more vague and I decided that it should hang so as to be more interesting.

It looks better in real life, really:

I made large paper mache flowers, attached light bulbs and nylons and created a chandelier of sorts. I actually really like how the paper mache parts turned out. I put shades of red, maroon and brown on the topsides of the flowers in an attempt to meld in the brown stockings. I also didn't want to use pastels or "flowery" colors so that someone could see a different shape if they wanted to. Lightbulbs = ideas and the newspaper paper mache= the clutter in our minds. Ideas bloom, no?

When I brought it in and hung it up, everybody in class really responded to it, but we talked about mine last (and it'd been 2.5 hours!) so no one really wanted to talk by the time it got to me. No one really got the meaning, but I didn't care since I knew it was vague. People were turning in much worse stuff then that, so I felt kindof attacked by my teacher(she's always either in a really good or really bad mood and that was probably part of it) with her comments when she wasn't that thrilled with it. I understood where she was coming from in her comments, but I also had the feeling that if I had done her suggestions that she'd have nitpicked about those too. I couldn't help but feel darned if I did and darned if I didn't.

She also somehow lumped me in a category with this other girl (who is a snot and doesn't care about this class) in that we apparently both have good ideas but don't always convey them well. First of all, no one in this class conveys ideas well (or even thinks about what they're doing) and I felt a bit attacked. Shouldn't I get some credit for trying an idea when most others didn't?

I liked that teacher as a person- she's pretty interesting and she knows a lot of artist's work and you can have some good discussions with her- but she kinda drove me crazy as a teacher. I guess that's an example of what not to do when I get to be an art teacher, eh?

One good thing to come out of these two projects is that I found that I like paper mache and experimenting with it. I hadn't done it since like kindergarten, so it was fun to rediscover it.

How to celebrate the semester being over with? I have plans to go dancing tonight- the stake is having a dance for youth and grown-ups and I wasn't really planning on going but one of my YW was like "Liz, what time are you picking me up?" so I guess I'm going. There's nobody for me to dance with, but I guess I'm still going. ;)