sabato 2 agosto 2008

Photos of Grandma




















Untitled Portable Sculpture One-3























photos taken by myself, thank you to Daniel De La Rosa for technical help
i would like to note that some photos are missing, they are from: the desert, the pool, a parking garage.
statement:

This title of this piece is Untitled Portable Sculpture One. As I sat reflecting on the current process of this piece I came upon the realization that this piece is not yet finished. If I were to account for the life of this piece it is still a young child, It has been through so little has such few stories to relay back to viewers who as of it's lifespan. I do not think it is proper for me to officially name this sculpture, for I do not know it personally- and I may never have the privilege to bestow upon it a name suited to its preferences. It seems odd to speak of an objects preferences, but as I mindlessly added wood to the piece, with only an idea of a general shape-unaware of any ramifications my own actions would have on the inanimate object- I became aware of the life of the piece. The piece moves in its own fashion, and in every type of light shares with me a unique voice- I am only inches from understanding its inaudible murmur.
Untitled Portable Sculpture One was initially and remains to be a site-specific sculpture, making it's environment crucial to it's well being. My initial reasoning for this was that items in different environments consequently obtain different meanings or purposes, and I wanted to explore the meaning that an object would acquire if it were to be significant to several environments- or if several environments were significant to the object. The piece has been to several places in it's short lifespan, all of which ideally either intrinsically altered the sculpture or represented another point of view for both the viewer and sculpture to gain importance from. Another idea that I wanted to explore was the idea that as an object constructed of organic materials, such as metal and nails, when subjected to the elements would experience some sort of change or begin the process of decomposition, including rust. This piece was also about the exploration of a process of building itself. I would in no way ever claim to be a good builder, describing myself as fair at best. However, despite my lack of skill or experience building I wanted to take materials that once served a purpose useful to society and essentially make them appear purposeless. To achieve this I used wood that was from palettes that I deconstructed into the component boards that the palettes gain their useful qualities from. I then constructed a circular form that was too large to carry with ease, with too many sharp edges and splinters to touch sensually, too small to live within, and was not water tight. I then took this object, that at the time I felt uncomfortable in movement with, and placed it in my car.
Once the sculpture was in my car it began it's life cycle, this time spent in waiting was only a short incubation stage necessary for my personal development of the sculpture. It was at this point that a true questioning of what I regard as an originally minimalist approach to my piece, and I realized that the problems that I was having internally in approaching the piece were existent because I was attempting to not give the piece meaning myself. To me this piece is nothing, simply a process that I have gone through, a learning experience- and in this itself the piece has not only gained a meaning but perhaps a purpose that I did not anticipate or strive for. For example, in order to document the cycle that I introduced to this piece I decided to learn how to use a manual film camera for documentation. I liked the qualities that film intrinsically have, although it would have been easier and perhaps more conducive to the classroom to have used digital photos. Film, in order to be altered, must be altered by hand, there are skills involved- while digital photos can be manipulated easily by anyone with only a few clicks on a screen. I also felt that taking the photos myself is what truly made the documentation process of the piece viable as a part of the artwork. So, perhaps the photos took longer, and are not as good as they could have been had I let somebody else be the person to push the button exposing the film to light and recording an image of what their eyes saw.
In closing, this piece is to me as a child I am simply overseeing. I have no true emotions towards it, except for a longing to understand it- which I do not yet feel qualified to do, nor do I feel that the piece is ready for somebody to understand it fully. This piece is changing, and in front of our eyes it is telling us it's story visually, as an elderly woman tells her story by the wrinkles on her skin. In reflection I have found that it is not human to resist metaphor, and therefore I will try my best not to lend false meaning to Untitled Portable Sculpture One- whose purposeless nature may lend to it a purpose all along.



Constancy-2







Again, poor photos due to being shot by me with my point and shoot.sorry.
statement:
The title of this piece is constancy. For this project I wanted to use the required materials (plaster and ready-made materials) to illustrate a sense of faith. For many people faith is something that drives their day, and for others it is something that they reject. Both of these attitudes towards faith are something that I wanted to explore with this piece, as both are to be considered constancy. The concept of faith is to have an overwhelming trust in something that is unknown. When one is younger they trust religion without questioning its stories and rules, but as one ages a sense of doubt is cast on man religious beliefs. It is at this time that one decides their faith- whether it be united with an organized religion, personal, or nonexistent depends upon their experiences and surrounding. For myself faith is personal,I was not raised in a religious home however, I feel a connection with a god and don't need reassurance from an organized religion to feel faithful. I believe that questioning faith desires an element of child-like curiosity or wonder, and I wanted to capture this urge to explore in my piece.
Initially I wanted the piece to only be an exploration of childhood in general- the sense of wonder and relaxation that one feels as a child, the strong imagination. However, as I worked with my original materials, namely gummy bears, I began to feel very frustrated. This is when I decided that I should dissect the aspects of faith that allowed me to call upon my own faith when it felt like nothing was going quite right. I always wanted to create an environment that one interacted with, that one was forced to interact with or they would find themselves without understanding of the piece. My piece is essentially a tent that if viewed from the sides is translucent. Within the tent there is a light that is producing a colored glow and has a base that is reminiscent of the heavens. Inside the tent there and clothes-pins that are holding pieces of paper, on which are written the prayers of people I know. The prayers or hopes are unknown to me, but I have faith that people were honest and serious when they wrote on the cards. The papers are hanging from the crossbar of the tent as well as scattered on the ground around the light source. Also on the floor are black feathers and colored lights that represent doubt and hope that surround religion-the light source.
In conclusion this piece is about myself and also about everyone else, it is about what we feel as constancy- it is about our faith in ourselves as well as God. To construct the tent I used a translucent plastic drop cloth, pvc piping, and white picnic table covers. The light source is made of an recycled lamp base, floral lights, plaster treated with spray paint, chicken-wire, clear plastic kitchen wrap, painted butcher paper, and liquin. The prayers are written on paper from a moleskin notebook that I write in daily and are closed by clothespins given to me from a friends aunt whom I was once close with.

Blitzkrieg: A Synonym for Struggle



photos courtesy of Daniel De La Rosa
statement:
This piece is about an internal war. Initially, I was attempting to express a conflict between my emerging adult self and a sense of yearning to return to my childhood. As the piece progressed and I physically struggled with my materials it became clear that it was representative of more than I had originally intended or suspected. The piece became less about the initial struggle within myself and more about the struggle that I sense when confronted by society. The piece serves as a visual representation for any and all situations where a conflict or struggle is occurring-internally or externally. For myself, it is a visual representation of the moment when there is a sense of a breakthrough amidst a struggle, it is a move towards a resolution- no matter if the resolution is intended or not.
The term blitzkrieg, pronounced blits-kreeg, is a German term that has a literal translation of “lightening war”. The term was used by Hitler's army during WWII in reference to a swift attack that combined the use of ground and aerial forces. The idea of blitzkrieg was founded on the principals of speed and co-ordinated movement, and the plan was derived through the compiling of and expansion upon French and British battle tactics. I chose this term to describe my piece because of it's connotations with war, and it's negative connection to Hitler's army. I think that the term serves as a source of additional discomfort that allows my piece to come further from it's original exploration of struggle.
To construct this piece I have used both organic and non-organic materials including ply-wood, found and whittled wood, hogs casing, and florescent light-tubes.

aerie- 1





sorry that the quality of these photos is so poor.
statement:
I have titled this piece aerie. Aerie means home, to me this piece is about that sense of home that one feels when encompassed by a space. When I am home I sense a feeling of warmth that surrounds me immediately upon entrance. A sense of safety through the utilization of a shelter of some form is one of the primary needs that must be met by all living creatures in order to progress further in life. Because of this primal need all animals make a shelter where they can seek refuge from enemies, rest, and raise offspring in. For this piece I aimed to create a space that could embody the sensation that I feel when I return to the space that I regard as home. For me my home is my mother, wherever she is I feel safe and I know that I can seek comfort in her company. I believe that this association of my mother and home is part of my primal nature and is therefore common between myself and animals. Mammals spend the first months of their lives living within their mother in a biological shelter that is suited only for themselves. The sense of the womb is something that drove this piece for me, I wanted to create a piece that would close around the person who entered into it and would fit each person differently
Initially I wanted this piece to feel like home in the sense that one would regard home as the place of personal space. I wanted to use a myriad of materials to imply something similar to the nest of a bird, made of found materials that represent the area where the bird lives out their life. However, soon after I began the project my mother became ill and I realized that my sense of home is directly tied to her, not to where I make my personal space. For my initial piece I wanted to display the work vertically and have people enter it through an entrance that was in the front. I planned on having an area where the person inside could look up and see different light sources as though they where in a cave. The exterior was to look much like a mud nest, but created from cardboard. While working on a wire armature for the piece I placed the structure horizontally on the ground and was taken by the different effect that the piece had on me. This change of direction ended up changing the entire aesthetic plan for the piece. I decided to use the cardboard to paper mache the armature instead of weaving strips through and to use ropes to displace the weight of the piece and hang it from a beam instead of using resin-coated rope to support the weight of the piece. As I worked the new piece I did a large portion of the paper mache and inner bubble-wrap surface from within the piece, when possible, because I felt that this was important in the creation of the piece in the three-dimensional.
Upon completion I had used more materials than I had originally planned in my cardboard only plan. I still used the cardboard in my piece, however I deconstructed the layers of cardboard from boxes that I found in various dumpsters instead of stacking it and cutting it like a topographical map. I used these deconstructed layers to paper mache the form that I had constructed from chicken wire. Before completion of the paper mache process I weaved some medium-strength natural rope through the wire to create a network or vein system-something that would connect the interior of the piece to the outside world. The piece was still very fragile at this point so I decided to coat the paper mache with a resin in hopes of the piece gaining structural strength. I was very indecisive about how I would treat the interior of the piece. Initially I wanted to treat the inside with a sort of paper mulch, but time did not permit for this treatment so I was at a loss. Finally, after much indecision, I decided that I would use bubble wrap. The bubble wrap's transparency would allow the frame of the piece to be visible while still serving to protect the occupant from the sharp points of the chicken wire frame- like the membrane of the placenta acts in the womb.