Creating my sculpture final

Week 11 Day 1: Creating my sculpture final


For the past few weeks I have been creating my sculpture final. I proposed to my class a sculpture of a trash can covered with Magazine adds and a mannequin inside of it also covered in magazine adds.


The piece would represent how I personally view the pressures and the standards of beauty to be a load of trash. Not that I think models are trash, but what the public and what makes money views as beauty is trash. Just as art is subjective, so should beauty. Beauty is all around and in many different forms, magazine adds are drawing a line around American culture's mind limiting what we will see as beautiful or not. Even though this is my main objective, I want this sculpture to still be open for interpretation, allowing the viewer to bring their own ideas and meanings to the piece.


I used Mod Podge to glue the magazine pages to the trash can and the mannequin. I also drew a black bar over the eyes of the models to hide their identity because I know it is not the model's fault, it is the media's and the public's fault that beauty is set at the standard it is.

Play with art

Week 10 Day 1: Play with art

Can working with art at some point be considered as "playing" with art? Is art fun? Is art an experience? Is art an experiment?

I must admit when I hear the word "play" by itself, I immediate visualise a stage, with actors in costumes, reciting lines in something like a school play. Things are organized and practiced, rehearsals happen and new things are tried. Preparing for the ultimate performance soon to happen in the future. The show is perfected up to the performance. However there is another word "play" and that is when I think of children in a park, girls with dolls, boys with trucks using their imagination creating situations even calamities to overcome and eventually figure things out. It is a learning process, taking things they have observed and putting it into application. Practicing for the future. Can "play" be applied to art?

While I work on my art, often times I make mistakes, or something happens I wasn't prepared for (good or bad) and I have to make alterations and adapt in order to continue with my creation. I half the time experiment. Vincent Van Gogh said " I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it." In that sense I end up creating a situation that I need to overcome. If I look at it through the theatrical word, I am rehearsing, perfecting, trying new things in my studio, preparing for my final piece that will later be shown. While the art is being viewed or in an exhibit, shouldn't it be experienced? Just as a child experiences the rush of a slide in a playground could there be an experience in art? Isn't a school play an experience for the audience?

Even though most of what I have written down are questions, I have an answer for myself. That art can be play, art can be playful, art is experimental, art is practiced, art is an experience, yes art can be play. However, that is the answer for me...not necessarily the answer for you and thus art is subjective.

Time Lapse

Week 9 day 3: Time lapse

In my sculpture class our first project was to create a self portrait in clay. Sculpting my very first head, face, neck, hair, and shoulders wasn't easy. For the fun of it (and if my instructor is nice maybe extra credit) I documented my progress. In 4-D class we discussed stop motion animation and time lapse. Since I had pictures taken every 5 minuets while I worked with the clay, i figured i could create a time lapse with my photographs. I started taking photos the second day of work out of seven.

And here is the YouTube link just in case it doesn't work here on the blog. (YouTube Link)

Site Specific Art

Week 9 Day 1: Response to "One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity" by Miwon Kwon


Here in school whenever I have created a drawing, sculpture or painting I always imagine it being placed in the classic gallery or museum. White walls, no windows, controlled lights, hard floors a place that is quiet so that viewers will carefully observe the art, contemplate it and not be distracted by anything outside the room. After reading the section my 4-D studio teacher instructed us to read, I read that the room I just described is considered a "blank slate" a room that

"actively disassociate the space of art from the outer world, furthering the institution's idealist imperative of rendering itself and it's values "objective," "disinterested," and "true." (page 13)

Although under the surface planned my art for the context of the blank slate, I never actually thought about it. Not until this class started teaching about installation art, site specific art. Where one goes to a location, indoors, or outdoors and creates art in or around it. When creating site specific art, often times the artist immerses the viewer into the art, for instance the reading gave the example of Mierle Laderman Ukeles's 1973 "maintenance art" performance where she was on her hands and knees and washed the entry plaza and steps, and then the exhibition galleries for a total of eight hours held at the Wadsworth Atheneum. She displayed the cliche domestic act of "woman's work" and made people notice the museum's perfect neutral, immaculate and pristine white spaces. Drawing attention towards the hidden daily maintenance in keeping the desired context. One could go on about the representation and meaning behind this performance, but I wanted to make the point that she choose that location and context and needed it to aid in her message. While others would have just used the exhibition galleries like myself to hand or set up works of art. She created art around and in the location, and it could never be recreated exactly the same way.

Another form of site specific art location is not the physical location, but an issue location. While art has often time reflected on the cultural and social and political issues, artist have now taken that issue to be a form of a location and created art based on that"site". The reading discusses how site specific art is becoming more and more popular and taking context to a whole new level.

"Nonetheless, this move away from a literal interpretation of the site, and the multiple expansions of the site in locational and conceptual terms, seem more accelerated today than in the past. The phenomenon is embraced by many artists, curators, and critics as offering more effective avenues to resist revised institutional and market forces that now commodify "critical" art practices." (page 30)

Instead of painting a painting and hanging it anywhere or creating a sculpture and placing it in the middle of a room, artist now are thinking of location, meaning, context, and "site" now more then ever. Be it a physical indoor outdoor blank slate or busy section, be it relational or topic issue and so many possibilities therein -site specific art could be said that an artist takes "The Space of Art" and converts it into "The Art of Space"

Judy Pfaff, Pierre Huyghe

Week 8 Day 1: Judy Pfaff and Pierre Huyghe

Again this morning in class we got to see more documentaries for "art 21" on artist. We enjoyed 4 artists, Judy Pfaff, Pierre Huyghe, Nancy Spero, and Jenny Holzer. Although I was inspired by all of them in different ways, the two who stuck out the most to me were Judy Pfaff and Pierre Huyghe.It stunned me to see the magnitude Judy Pfaff works in. She talked about how she originally thought she was going to be a painter and not be a sculptor. That was until she found that sculpting works better with they way she thinks and the way she is. She discussed how she let her life influence her art, and this particular exhibit was dealing with the death of her mother and friends in the past year. So her primary goal for the exhibit was emotion. She created great contrast using blacks and whites ( not bottom right picture, that is a different exhibit) in a balance like life and the loss. Pfaff said "I am kind of very romantic" and that she works towards other aspects in her art. She also mentioned how she will beguin with one idea and admits that she will always change her mind. I found these things further encouragement in my own endeavors because I feel very similarly towards art.









Although I wasn't moved one way or another by Pierre Huyghe. I didn't like his work and I didn't dislike his work I found what he did was inspirational."I need to create a world" Huyghe said. To create his worlds Huyghe did many different things, from working in video, in installation, performance that was opera like, to puppetry. His work was wrapped around time and setting, and he used many different medias to tell his message within time and setting. Some of his work was explained to the viewer as they watched or looked at his work, others allowed the viewer to bring their own thoughts into the artwork, asking themselves questions and interpreting to their desires. He created his world and documented his creation, the perfect example of time based art. Even though I am not swayed either way by his art, I did find this wisdom profound and meaningful. In discussing time, Pierre talked how with more artist, the exhibition was the end. To work for a period of time, and the exhibit shows their work at the end. He views an Exhibition as a start, a starting point for somthing new. It's appealing to see an artist dipping his fingers into many different medias instead of setteling on one thing. He is not a video artist, sculpture, or storyteller...he is all and more. It is appealing to a student like myself to see I do not have to choose one thing...I can explore and try something new.