Sculpture Project 2: Mould-making

Untitled
Cast Wax and Silkscreen

"Emissions Trading (also known as cap and trade) is a market-based approach to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants

A central authority sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted. The limit of cap is allocated or sold to firms in the form or emissions permits which represent the right to emit or discharge a specific volume of the specified pollutant"

"Experience with Market-Based Environmental Policy Instruments"
Stavins, Robert N. (November 2001)

Sculpture Project 1: Cardboard

For our first project in Sculpture, we were given the guidelines:

1. You must create a sphere that is exactly 12" wide
2. It must be able to roll down a ramp
   and
3. You can only use corrugated cardboard

We were given a quick demonstration on how to create a variety of different joints using cardboard and then let loose.

Using three different types of joints I proceeded to make three maquettes (a sphere, a cube, and a triangle) in preparation for my sphere. I was originally planning on doing a sphere that was essentially a cage, with said maquettes inside as a nod to the process of creation but after looking at these objects, I decided to do something completely different.

Instead, what I based my sphere on was the concept of creating the illusion of three dimensional space using a two dimensional form by spiral cutting two circles and then expanding them out like an accordion. Unfortunately, in my smaller shapes I forgot to take into consideration that thinner longer pieces of cardboard tend to suffer significantly in the realm of structural integrity and so I had to add a large number of elements to make the piece even physically viable.

That said, this is what I finally ended up with:



And in case you were wondering: It was a little too wide and almost made it down the ramp (which was about 14" wide)

House of Cards

This semester, the art class that I find myself taking is ARTS 049: Visual Processes: Introduction to Sculpture. I am really excited about this because it will give me the opportunity to work in 3-dimensional space, in a media that I have been really excited about for a long time, but have never actually tried to work in.

I will still be taking photographs and printing silkscreen in the coming months, but most of my creative efforts will be dedicated to this new class and new medium. Our first project (more of a fun, one-off sort of thing, that an actual project) was to build a house of cards; the results are listed below.

This is what I created:

No, not really.

When I first got the deck (it was brand new) I decided I wanted to make this elaborate monolith of a piece, but eventually due to certain restraints, such as the fact I must live and work in reality, this idea was whittled ever so slightly down to the playing card version of Versailles.

Designing this piece was relatively simple and while I could only use playing cards for the house, I was going to make the grounds and assorted wall/architecture out of other cards (Tarot, Pokemon TCG, Magic the Gathering, etc...) so I was very excited and fully prepared to set forth and accomplish the beast of a building.

Unfortunately, as these cards were brand new, they were incredibly slippery and therefore very irksome to stack 'traditionally.' After about 30 minutes of fruitless attempts to create even just two consecutive A-frames, I moved on to a more experimental method for the stacking. Armed with this new process (using two cards as support beams for a single central column) I abstracted from my Versailles idea, a one story 'version' and thus created the below house of cards.

After completing this, I did attempt to create a processional and garden with Tarot and Pokémon cards, but at this point I had been at this task for over two hours straight and I decided to give it a rest.

Colour Project 4: Final

Untitled

In my art I strive to explore ideas of identity and past grandeur. I am fascinated by the press of time; what has come before us and what we have left behind; items once so important, now cast aside and forgotten.

This project is about that ideal of something forgotten. This massive plant, now almost completely subsumed and wholly forgotten by those who once placed it there and those who relied on it for their livelihood. It stands for decay, a past industrial age, now quietly disintegrating with time.
There is another aspect to it to though, this idea of the factory within the setting. It sits there like a monster simultaneously towering over a part of the landscape and an integral part of it. It is alien and foreign, but also a source of great life that the flora and fauna could not live with out.





- -
One last note: I mentioned this during my critique but I don't really feel as if this is the end of the project. I have had a lot of ideas and I definitely see a lot more work of this kind in my future.

Silkscreen Project 6: Final

Series II

Within a series, there is an inherent sense of commonality and conformity. However, at what point does that begin to break down and where does a series become a collection disparate forms.

This project seeks to explore the conceits of individuality and identity and how disparate elements change and affect said ideas.

Silkscreen Project 4b: Reprint

Circles and Bars II

Much in the same way that I felt unhappy with my previous version of my 2-colour print, I also decided to reprint and improve my 3-colour project.

The only real changes I made were to the inks, the colours of which I darkened slightly and the consistency of which I thinned down. Unfortunately, while I did find myself having more success that previously, I do not view this project as anything more than a study and a exercise in technical reproduction.

Silkscreen Project 3b: Reprint

As I was unhappy with my previous attempt with this project, I decided to reprint the entire thing with a few changes made.

The main change is I decided to print the positive forms of the shapes rather than their negatives (which had actually been my original idea). I felt this allowed for a more interesting and successful dialogue between the elements. I also chose to change the colours slightly in an attempt to print them more cleanly and successfully.

Silkscreen Project 5: Poster

For this project, we were tasked as a class to each create a run of posters for a real event, specifically fifty in number, that were to be hung around campus. As a member of the students administrators for Spiral, Oberlin's genre fiction literary magazine, I decided to make posters for their spring semester general interest meeting.

In the design of my poster, I wanted to create something that was subdued in character; that evoked a more refined sensibility (as Spiral is often seen as a less serious, less professional magazine). Because of this I chose the greys, white, and black, as I felt they are often seen as clean colours; they draw attention but are not loud. I chose to print the background as I did and the specific fonts for a related reason. The uneven edges of the background I felt looked somewhat like a page torn from a notebook and the fonts were chosen as I felt they were somewhat reminiscent of those of a typewriter, what has become one of the most iconic symbols of highbrow literaryism.

Finally, in an quasi-ironic send off to all the ideals I tried to cultivate with the rest of the poster and to emphasise the idea that Spiral is not your generic literary magazine, I created the font-art word at the top, which I though added a sense of quirky dynamism to the otherwise rigid, mostly static piece.

Colour Project 3: Staged Narrative

Shift in Focus

At one point in your life sitting half-naked in a hallway is your morning ritual, but fast forward a few years and for many that is replaced by the newspaper. These images explore various habits we develop in college and what they often will become when we leave and start out real 'professional lives,' the juxtaposition of the two speaks to what we find important at a certain time and how our focus changes.

Silkscreen Project 4: 3-Colour Project

Within the project I attempted to explore quality of reproduction, for which silkscreening is most commonly used. My idea was to create posters for a fictitious company that offered mass-produced "personalised gifts" for a variety of [Christian/American] holidays. These would then be displayed in a huge 4x4 grid on a wall to amplify the crass overwhelming, if not claustraphobic nature of the posters.

When creating this project, I was thinking about ideas of commercialisation, what I see as the ever-increasing laziness/detachment of the general public, and the narrow-minded majority-centric ideals that drive a lot of holiday cheer/celebrations in the United States.

Unfortunately, as you will see below, I have still not mastered the art of silkscreening as reproduction and so I do not view this project as complete, but more or a study in reproduction/learning experience concerning the technicalities of printing.

Fall Break

During my fall break this year, I decided to go visit my family for first break in a few years. I first met up with them in Cleveland and we all went to see one of my cousins get married in Harkness Chapel located on the Case Western Reserve campus, which I brought along a camera and decided to shoot.
After this, we all traveled back to where the reside now, in Houston, TX, having moved this summer. I then spent a few days there and during which I traveled up to San Antonio to visit my friend who is going to school at Trinity University, located there.
The photos below appear off colour because I decided to, rather than use the nice professional film I have been shooting on recently (Fujifilm Pro 160 S and Kodak Portra 160 NC), to use some Kroger brand film that I found when I purchased my last 35mm cameras - the discolouration is due to the fact that it expired in 1999. The reason that I decided to do so is that I find the false colour readings that often come with shooting on expired film/printing on expired paper are very interesting and often surreal/nostalgic, ideas I thought appropriate for weddings. Once I left the wedding though, I thought that since I had started anyway, I might as well try to finish off rest of Kroger rolls, which I shot while back in Texas

Colour Project 2: Sense of Place

Spaces

To people, the edifices that surround us form a kind of visual white noise. Not only are they iconic in our landscapes, but in no small way do they also become integral to, if not the entirety of, the landscapes as well.

Silkscreen Project 3: 2-Colour Print

Circles and Bars

With this project, I decided to continue my exploration of 'repetition of form' that I started in my previous silkscreen project. I don't really see this piece as very resolved or even well produce by more of a study in both technique and concept.

The overarching idea behind this exercise was to examine the tension created from between the interactions inherent in the piece. The main source of tension was between colours: white, red, and blue (all very basic and unadulterated, used straight from the manufactures inks) and how they interact with each other and the negative space of the white card stock. This was further complicated by their depictions in the simple geometric forms of the rectangle and circle and how these shapes are used to create a certain phasing that happens within the piece.