Found Objects

Finding objects proved to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated. It took me a long time to find my first object. It ended up being a shell on the beach. I found a few other shells that day and then I began to pick up little objects here and there. I ended up with 14 total found objects and I decided that my response drawings would be characters based off of the objects. I decided that I only wanted to use natural organic objects and nothing man made. I drew up some sketches then narrowed it down to six final objects. Here they are:

 

A Shell

A Berry

A Walnut

Pine Needles

A Palm Leaf

A Leaf

 

Here are the objects that did not make the cut:

They are Rolly Glasses, another Leaf, another Shell, a Feather, Coral, Business Card, an Oil Pastel and a Granny Smith Apple Sticker.

 

For my responses to the objects, I decided to create a character to go with each item. Here are my drawings.

 

A Shell Frog

 

A Berry Head

 

 A Walnut Buffalo

 

Pine Needles Man

 

A Palm Leaf Skeleton

A Leaf Man

Walk the Line

Response to Francis Alys -  I found Alys' video to be very interesting. I like how the discription talks about the social and political undertones in his work and how the ice is dwindling into nothing. In such a way it comments on economic hardship, I think that is very clever how he can take such a simple action and make it represent so much. I like that the video has no soundtrack but rather uses the sounds of the city and the cars passing by, the voices of people in town and small children playing. It gives the video a raw and unedited feeling to it which is very strong.

Response to Janine Antoni - This was an interesting piece. I think it is cool that she learned a skill in order to create her work. A skill like tight rope walking isn't usually thought of as art unless you are in a circus I guess, but she made it into something different. At first when I saw the rope stretched over the water I thought "Why didn't she make it touch the horizon?" but then she explained that just for a moment as she crossed the rope touched the horizon. It makes it look like she is stepping right on the surface of the water. That is very cool.

Response to William Pope L - Well, the video was boring, but I guess in this case the video itself wasn't really the art. In his interview he talks about it being a commentary on homelessness and also racial issues. I think the crawl is an interesting way of displaying his topics. I like his quote "The reason for the contradiction is that I’m suspicious of things that make sense. Maybe I’m afraid of it. False security. Whereas contradiction does make sense to me." in the Bomb Magazine article. The idea that things that make sense are a false sense of security is thought provoking.

...

 

When I think of "Walk the Line" the only thing that really comes to minde is the Johnny Cash song. I tried for the longest time to think of something else for the assignment but came up empty handed. So I decided to just go with Johnny. To push the "line" idea I decided to do a line drawing portrait of the Man in Black. Here is what I came up with:

 



Scratch

For the assignment "Scratch" I took photos of people scratching their hind quarters.

*I received permission from each individual photographed.

 

Stencil

My initial idea for Stencil was to just put tape on a piece of cardboard and paint over it with yellow paint and then peel off the tape. There was not a lot of thought put into this but then I saw that it kind of resembled the shape of Australia. So then I drew the outline of Australia over the shape and I remembered hearing earlier in class that when something is stamped it is viewed as official. So I had the idea to stencil out in red "Africa" over the continent. Simply to play with the viewer and make them think, "Wait, is that really Africa?"

 

 

My next one was a stencil from the Duchamp painting "Portrait of the Artist's Father" and over top of the image I stenciled "Mom" to falsly label the man.

 

The following image was the statue of liberty with "Money" stenciled over top.

 

The last five images are of states with their respective capitals. Over the state outlines are incorrect state names. See if you can guess what the real states are. Have fun.

1

 

2

3

4

5

 

Answers:

1) Montana 2) Idaho 3) Washington 4) North Dakota 5) Oregon

Transparent

When we got the assignment for transparent, I immediately thought of glass. On my walk home that day I happened to find a string of Christmas lights on the ground and decided to snag a few of the bulbs. This is the piece that I then created using those bulbs. I think it looks like some sort of shrine or something. I used super glue, tape, balsa wood, paper, cardboard and guache. It was a lot of fun to make.

 

 

My next piece was using a bottle. I wrote out the word "Perception" on a paper and then burned the edges of it to make it look old and pirate-like. Perception is supposed to indicate that the idea of treasure is all in the eyes of the beholder. I then put the paper in the bottle like a message in a bottle. Lastly I painted the rim of the bottle as if a gold liquid was dripping out of it.

 

 

 

This third piece is a casette tape case that I put a photograph of a painting that I did in high school into. It is of  monochromatic yellow man with a purple checker background. I then painted a monochromatic yellow woman on the surface of the case looking the opposite direction as the man. It almost appears as though they could be looking at eachother.

 

This next piece I made is a flip book-ish type thing. I traced line drawings of women and placed each drawing in its own baggie. I then placed a piece of colorful striped paper between each girl and bound them all together and covered the top with orange construction paper. The idea is to flip through the pictures and be able to move around the images and stripes.

 

 This next piece is a wind chime made from shards of glass taped to thread with a transparent button at the top.

 

My next piece I painted on a piece of glass. I painted it to look like feathers. You can put it in the window and have the light shine through to make the colors extra vibrant. Pretty fun. I then covered the edges in white tape so that no one will cut themself. Safety is important.

 

 Like the last one this one was painted on glass as well. This one I decided to paint verticle lines in different shades of blue, some gray, and black. I left the space in between the lines blank so you can see through the glass. I then wrapped the edges of this piece in black tape.

 

Throwing the safety aspect out the window for this piece I broke my piece of glass. I then took the shards and spaced them out to recreate the rectangle. Then I taped the pieces in place. I then painted this aquatic scene on tracing paper and mounted it to the back of the glass shards. The light illuminates the image quite nicely.

 



Sand Paper



My first idea for sand paper was to make a sculpture out of paper on the beach. Here is what I did for that. It is supposed to resemble a river. I think it almost ended up looking fabric-like though.

 

 

I then had the idea to make a stack of paper in the sand, therefore it is "sand-paper." The shadow in the photo is pretty interesting I think.

 

My third piece was using that same stack of paper. I taped the stack in half and then used sand paper to scrape away a hole in the middle. After that I dripped glue in the hole and dropped sand over the glue. Then I spray painted the whole piece using yellow, green and brown.

 

 

Idea number four was a sandpiper on sandpaper! I painted an image onto sand paper using guache.

 

After that I decided to do another painting on sand paper. This one was just of a mountain, sky and abstract lines going off into the distance.

 

The sixth piece is a pastel drawing on sand paper of my bedroom door. 

 

The seventh piece is a paper written about sand, making it a "sand paper."

 

Lastly, my eighth piece is sand portraits of the four Beatles band members. I just drew out their faces with glue and then dropped sand over the glue.

 

Thread

Here are two pieces I did with paper towell used as a painting rag and sewn onto construction paper of similar color using monochromatic thread.

 

 This one is a small scrap of denim with thread sewn into it in somewhat random fashion and a hole cut into it and then mounted on a white tag board.

 

 Yarn standing in for thread. Glued in a zig-zag fashion with the center cut and hanging loose on a black background with a white border.

 

 A tiny little book bound with thread. It's a Good Book.

 

As I was working on the thread mini project, I decided to sew my finger. Here is the photo to show this event. Enjoy! And yes the thread goes under the skin.