The Agony Of Glory

The meaning behind this piece is to represent who I am and what I have become of today. The trophy itself represents accomplishment and the needles or push pins on the trophy represents the obsticles that I have encountered in my life.

Final Project: Mobiles

For your final project you will be creating a sculptural, moveable, mobile. See the assingment sheet on the links to the right. Do an image search for Alexander Calder or mobiles. Think about materials you may want to use to create your mobile, you may use whatever you want!
Have fun with this one!
Final Crit will be on the last day of class.

Repetition Project

For  my repetition project I decided to make another dress. Originally it was going to be covered in silk petals and manipulated to look like many rows of gathered ruffle (the picture at least shows the dress's shape. But since I've been shopping around I found these different shaped flat backed mirrors that I thought would be much more autobiographical than flower petals would. Plus it would be much easier to just glue theses little mirrors to the fabric after i have sen the dress together. 

 

lol i know this is slightly off topic BUT

i thought it was pretty neat!

i know were done with the inflatable scuplture
and that we dont have a subway but check it out!
i know what im doing if i ever go to new york!
lolz
the bear looks animated
like its shaking water off his back in the artic! tehhehee

Kinetic Pneumatic Subway Bear

Another idea I had...

This idea just occured to me... it might be totally lame, I can't tell (that's where you guys come in). I was thinking about things I've made from multiples and thought of the popcorn strands my family used to make for Christmas. Which led me to thinking of other homey things, which led me to the idea of couches (couches aren't just a THING to me, they're an IDEA... yes, I really love couches). Point is, what if I made a couch out of popcorn? And I'm talking a big couch. Like, really big. Almost life size? Let me know what you think. (The inside would not be popcorn, but don't tell anyone. Maybe styrofoam. Or an actual couch. Not really, but something big, like cardboard boxes.)

a few ideas

yeep! i apologize for not posting sooner! i actually forgot which email/password combination i used to register with blogger so i had to do some trial and error experimentation haha.

anyway, i've done a few multiples projects before, so i've got a few ideas in my head that have been spinning around for a year or so.

i think i might use edible materials. my mom used to take me to cubs games when i was a kid in chicago all the time, we were loyal fans. i never liked peanuts, so she used to bring me m&ms, so i think i might make a baseball glove out of m&ms. that, or a catcher's mask, i thought would be pretty cool.

i also thought about using food in a more...life-like way. meaning, i would take natural, unprocessed foods like carrots or apples, and do something with them involving their process of decay. although this is probably my favorite idea, i'm not sure what memory or autobiographical element i would connect it to, yet. perhaps my "decayed" relationship with my father over time, he was never active in my life and ended up moving to california when i was little. i think this would be a pretty emotionally charged idea.

i'm planning on making a trip to good will tonight, so i'm going to see if anything inspires me furthur.

let me know what you think!!
thanks, guys.

julia

Lynette edited to add this photo of "What Happens: Blooming Potato (after 3 months), potato, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, 2005-6 by Lauren Fensterstock.

OKEE took me long enough but here goes!

i came up with numerous ideas last night and im not
QUITE sure which one ima gonna do....

SO

1: a catus made out of marbles with toothpicks for spikes
well i hate catus but my boyfriend thought it would be a cool idea lol
2: a series of pipecleaner cats and 1 marble cat
im different and i like cats
3: just a pipe cleaner cat
did i mention i like cats?
4: a fish caught in a net, made out of fish hooks and a net
a fish is free to roam the sea...SWIM the seas,
untill one day when givin a since of hope with a
tastey treat is pulled from its home by painfull
hooks and stuck in a net(this isnt about the fish though)
5: penguin out of sugar cubes lol theres a reason for that one for sure
for sum reason everyone thinks my favorite animal is a penguin...
well hey arent, so makeing it out of sugar cubes and not ice
cubes would represent how fake/false that idea is
6: music notes- cd's cassets and what not
i likea music =^_^= it is my escape from the world


and so far my personal favorite
a raven made out of sticks and fake leaves
=^_^= id use real leaves BUT being we live in a place
where trees dont exist, no palm trees dont count as trees...-_-
lol
anyway a raven is my favorite animal and
i love nature and i have a strong connection
to both elements so i thought this fit well



WOOT!

my brains are meltered now from
all that thinking!
lolz
tell meh what joo thinks?

Gluuuuuuuue

Inspiration struck me in the adhesive section of the dollar store yesterday. I found these hot glue sticks to the left and figured they'd make good building blocks for SOMETHING... I thought it would be really cool to make a massive hollow structure kind of like the Aggro Crag on that old show Global Guts (the original crag, not the lame reincarnations). Basically I'd just keep adding sticks to form a great big conglomeration of triangles, squares, etc. The second idea I had was to create a replica of the house I grew up in.

At first I thought the obvious means of connecting these sticks was hot glue itself, but since hot glue seems to have a bad reputation in this class, maybe super glue would work better?

just an idea

So I was thinking for the repetition project that I would use rubber bands, paint them black somehow and paste them on a white foam board to create a piece of wall art somehow... 

I think the white and black contrast will work well and I want to incorporate different ways in which to use the rubber bands. Ways such as, just placing them with the circular shape creating the design, weaving the rubber bands together, cutting and or stretching the rubber bands outward from the board or just along the board.

any ideas/help/comments would be super

... let me know what you think

My Repetition Project Ideas

I'm considering doing embroidery, as long as the stitching counts as repetition. I want to stitch the image of a dream catcher, where certain creatures and images are entangled in the dream catcher's web, while others are entwined in the feathers that hang from the main ring. I also want to go for a theme of elemental balance, where each of the hanging feathers represent a different element, and even the items entwined in the web of the dream catcher represent the harmony that can be achieved between opposites. As far as the underlying meaning is concerned, the stitching represents that, at least to me, personality is not a joint, fluid thing, but a combination of all the little parts of the self--some of which contradict one another--to create a greater thing. I tend to see my self as being a precarious balance of fluid traits that sometimes rearrange themselves to fit the situation, but the main joint image that they portray is always the same.

A dream catcher, according to Native American stories, traps bad dreams, but lets good ones filter through the feathers and into the dreamer's mind. This can be paralleled to the complicated nature of one's personality and how it is expressed, because what someone sees as being 'harmful' or 'helpful' is personal. In this way, much like a dream catcher, people filter their personalities, trapping certain parts of them inside, and letting other parts pass through for others to see. I know that there are certain parts of myself that I would rather people see more than others, and I therefore feel that the dream catcher is a parallel for myself and the way I filter my personality.

I've never done embroidery before, but i have all this random embroidery stuff sitting around the house and have always been curious, so I think I'll be able to manage.

However, if this idea doesn't work, i don't really know what I want to do...
I could make something out of those little Dove candy wrappers...
--you know, the ones with the little pieces of advice in them--
because i have quite a few of them. I could use them to represent how we shape ourselves by the way we react to outside information (believing it, being skeptical of it, etc.) but I'm not exactly sure how I would achieve this. I like the dream catcher idea better, overall.

For this project, I was thinking about making some sort of sculpture out of old license plates from antique stores. I have a love for traveling and I think that rustic pieces like those are a really cool representation of that. I am just having trouble deciding what to make and exactly how to sculpt them together to make an interesting piece. Any suggestions would be cool...I'm still deep in the thought process but wanted to throw my idea out there.

Jen

idea

hi all, here is the idea for my next project

penny great wall, glue the pennies together and make them look like great wall.
i have to find out what kind of glue do i need to to make all the pennies stick really hard together.

Ideas for Repetition Project

What's up class,

For the repetion project that we are about to start this upcoming week I came up with a couple of ideas for my project. First of all this project has to tell something about you as a person and could represent anything that has happened in one's life or one's beliefs. So with that in mind I thought for one of my ideas that I could make a trophy using paper mache or styrofoam as the trophy and covering it completly in tacs or pushpins. The reason why I would do this is becuase in my life I had to overcome a lot of obsticles to be where I am today so I thought the tacs could represent the "obsticles" that I had to overcome and the trophy could represent "achevement" or "accomplishment". I was also thinking of applying the same effect but making a deploma or a gold metal or something but I thought the trophy would make more since for now because it's more identifyable. So that's what I'm thinking for my project, I diffenitly want to use the tacs but I may change the subject (trophy) if I come up with a better idea over the weekend. If anyone would like to comment on this there more then welcome to. As for the rest of you, hopefully my idea can inspire and/or help some of you to come up with your own for those who haven't yet.

-Matt

Repetition Wedding Dress

Hi everyone! I was thinking about making a wedding dress out of plastic grocery bags. I plan on first folding and sewing each bag into a small square or other shapes (see photo), then putting a bunch of these patches together to create larger pieces. The point of this is to have a thicker layer and also to make neat decorative patterns on the dress. I’d like to make it life-sized and wearable. If anyone has any clean plastic grocery bags they could bring to class for me, I would really appreciate it! I need way more bags then I currently have to make this.

Haha dang, I guess we are going to have two guitars in here. I promise I didn't copy you! I've been wanting to do a guitar since the day we saw the slides, I promise :)

My plan is to construct an acoustic guitar model out of audio cassette tapes. There are three possible routes for it to go:

1) If I'm able to find a crappy, super cheap guitar at Savers or Goodwill, I will incorporate the neck, saddle and bridge into the cassette model to preserve actual guitar functionality, complete with strings. Basically to make it strummable.

2) If I'm not able to find it in time, I will not incorporate actual guitar parts and make it purely made of cassettes, with the tape of the cassettes used as "strings." So this is the model that would have no functionality.

3) A second option that would be an additional step added to #2 (without guitar parts) would be to incorporate keyboard-based elements to the functionality of it. I have two mini-mini-cheapo "keyboards" meant for young children, and taken them apart. The length of the keys is approximately that of the bridge of a guitar, so I would place these in ascending order on the bridge where normally frets would go, and preserve playability, wiring the speakers to be placed on the head of the guitar. Additionally, I found an old mickey mouse keyboard which has a very large button which operates very simple drum sounds - on alternating hits a bass drum and snare hit play. I would place this where normally the hole or pickups are on the guitar. Essentially, you could operate the drums with your right hand, tapping on the main body of the guitar, and play melodies with your left hand via the keys on the bridge.

Any opinions on any of it? I'm leaning most towards #3. I dig functionality.

Classic Guitar

Hey Class! For my project I've decided to makea guitar out of extra pieces from rolls of film. There are various extra pieces, as shown below. I think im going to use the clear plastic roll holder as the sides of the guitar and flatten the roll case (far right) and use them as the guitar with the inner roll piece (third from left) as the strings and neck of the guitar and finally the round tops as the knobs and extra details. I plan on following the layout of a guitar like the one in the bottom picture.

Thats about it! Let me know what you think!

Repetition Milkshake

I was thinking of doing a giant milkshake made from straws. Just the glass the milkshake is in will be made from straws. I'll make the whipped cream out of paper mache and possibly the cherry as well. I'll try making a giant straw out of straws, too. I'm just trying to figure out how to connect the straws together. I can simply place the straws inside each other and weave them like a basket, but I think I want a more permanent solution. Maybe threading them together.

Here is an image I might work off of.

Modular Units and Repetition

The modular units and repetition project is due April 15th. Check out the links and assignment sheet on the sidebar. Bring sketches to discuss!

(These images are the work of photographer Philip Toledano.)

Day of Inflation

Well, the day of inflation went great, you guys did an excellent job!

Trial Run

Today we did a trial run for our inflatable sculptures (a frog and a dragonfly in case you can't tell). I think they turned out awesome!

Come see them inflate in person!

When: Thursday March 20th 10am-730pm

Where: In the Art Building Courtyard

Why: Because its cool, and its a giant plastic thing filled with air! Duh...

OR, if you have a really good reason for missing out on the fun, you can watch our trial run on

this video...

And, thanks to Sabine for taking it upon herself to make this 3D model /schematic of the frog. Well Done!