Livi _ Project Ideas

Project #1

For the small world project, my working idea is 'evolution,' but that will have to be tailored around the object I find at Goodwill in the morning. I was thinking about doing an empty candle holder, with the evolution of 'flame' but that feels too obvious.

Project #2

The snowflake is: fragile, cold, and intricate.

   Other things that are fragile, cold, and intricate:

people, ice sculptures, gems/minerals

Could be seen as self-reflection?

 I have a thing of felt I was thinking of starching or coating in glue-water to portray a bulbous bed of snow, or snow climbing to up the side of the 'This' gallery wall. I've been playing around with an online snowflake maker to (1) understand how to fold them (2) figure out how they are lined out within that fold (how they unfold) and (3) to experiment with shape and pattern without wasting paper. Also, it's quite fun.

~ https://dangries.com/rectangleworld/PaperSnowflake/

This was my first snowflake. It didn't really scream snowflake, despite my efforts by adding more triangles within the main line form. I then decided to take a less geometric path, which was a bit difficult to do since the cutting tool operates with lines that connect along a set of dots the user makes, so in order to do natural, smooth lines the user must set up a long line of dots in a row instead of a free-flow cutting tool. I was very happy with the results. Yet, I know that my folding of a hexagonal paper would produce far less perfect results. There's a lot more room for error if I were to switch from this perfect, digitized format to paper. Additionally, I'm going to have to cut the paper into a hexagon before I even fold it, so I will have to be carefully measuring lines and angles. It would be helpful to use graphing paper initially, then switching to white paper.

This last one was far easier to design, and yet it is possibly the most interesting looking. Yet, I don't think it is all that feasible to do with paper since the points would be to fragile and the points would not line up across all layers of the folds. This would be true for the second natural snowflake as well. The most doable snowflake pattern would be the first geometric snowflake and the first natural snowflake. Between those two, the natural snowflake is better looking.

I made more 'naturalized snowflakes in nature patterns of flower petals, leaves, and twigs. I then made someone I thought looked more like an actual snowflake more than anything so far.

I'm thinking maybe I should cut these out. It took a while to design them, so I think it would be wise to print them out ad use them. Maybe I could take the ink and print them onto fabric. I don't know how I'd be able to do that. 

My friend said this snowflake looks more royal than the previous one. I tried to use very rough and jagged patterns to produce a different snowflake look.

I printed these out from the library:

I'm going to paper mache them onto balloons to create these bowl forms, with the snowflakes as the centerpiece and dark baby-blue tissue paper to go with it. They will hang in an arch on the back of the room. I will cut out other snowflakes and scatter them on the floor in the corner with a fireplace - wood with a stick teepee in the center.

I was inspired by the story "To Build a Fire" by Jack London. His stories are about nature and its brutality, which is the message I want to send with the snow and the cold - especially in relation to Wyoming - a sort of looming ever-present thing that we tend to ignore because we have heated houses and heated cars and puffy coats to escape it. In the story, the man is warned of the cold in the Yukon - he is there during the gold rush hoping to make himself wealthy. He sets out to meet his friends and ignores the warning. Eventually it gets so cold he decides to stop and build a fire. He and the dog warm themselves, and then he attempts to set out once more. The dog is hesitant to leave the fire because he is anxious about the cold - the dog is wise of nature unlike the arrogant man. The man eventually falls into water, and has to build another fire right away before the wet kills him. He first builds the fire under a snow-laden tree and it goes out. Then, he frantically lights all 70 of his matches in his attempt to save himself building the new fire. He burns his hands and accidentally scatters the fire, which burns out.

He is jealous of the dog's warm fur and calls on it to come so he can kill it and take its warmth.

Yet, the dog is suspicious of the strange desperation in the man's voice, and does not come.

By the point, the mans hands are too numb to kill the dog and he cannot feel them at all despite a constant effort of smacking them against his legs.

The man dies and the dog is left stranded.

My project explores a different route the story could have gone. The man lights the 70 matches, the matches burn the man alive, showing that even if he had managed to light the fire, the man cannot control nature and do as he pleases - and his arrogance erases him regardless. The fire, which is his perceived savior, consumes his life just as the cold did. The inventions we make to combat nature can turn around and spit in our faces. We are not safe.

Initially, I drew the man projecting on the side, but I went to the 'This' gallery and saw there's outlets on all sides, so I'd much rather have him projecting onto the fabric trailing under the arch, and then I can have the snow-bowls brach out to the other wall. The front wall (door-side) won't have anything on it, but this will be the side with cut-out snowflakes and a campfire.

The fabric probably won't fall the way I'd like it to, so I might starch it or paper-machete it the same way to portray natural snowbank-esque forms. For the man, the cutout of the fire needs to be made out of a lighter paper, or at least a lighter colored paper than the man, which I will paint black for an optimal shadow.

Project #3

Since Project 3 is situational, the best place to situate the sick 'runny nose' would be by a stream. The sickness is flowing into the stream and spreading. Though it is inconvenient, it is enveloped by the large water and becomes retrospectively small. I want the sick 'being' to blend into its environment naturally, like a being made of grass or roots, or maybe even concrete if it were to sit by a stream under a bridge - it could even be a sick troll.
It should also have its face scrunched up, and wrinkled in distress. 

Ashley 3rd Project Idea

 

Here is my sketch for my idea, I really liked the idea of having some elegant shapes as well as incorporating tension. I really want to look into using chicken wire and plaster gauze for some of the shape and then use needle felting. I think that using velvet fabric to cover the plaster gauze and then blending it into the needle felting would be really cool. I want to use either deep red or deep green for the colors. This will hang on the wall. I want to find a really cool hook to hang it on the wall with. 

I looked up John Newman and looked at some of his work. I recognized his work from last semester so I'll have to remember his name from now on because I really liked his work. 

Joshua Trembly Project 3

 My found object is a 6 sided silver box with red upholstery and decorative patterns. It's small and fits in the palm of one's hand. My plan is to use it to house a small figure, probably made out of sculpey, and my favorite idea so far is to house a little monkey figure in it.

These are just a few ideas of what action the monkey will be performing. He is meant to be a monkey "servant", so I would like for him to be offering a gift in one hand and maybe holding fruit in the other. I like the idea of him having a spring or wire lower half and an animal body. I could either make the box so that he springs out when it's opened, or leave it open all of the time. The red upholstery I will probably ditch and replace with blue or yellow, and the lid I would like to line with a needle felted blue and yellow pattern. 

One difficulty I foresee is that I will be done with this pretty early. I'm starting with this concept, but have also thought about making something to "hold" the found object with the monkey figure, like a small beautiful man. I could add him to my growing character collection :). Or, I could make something like a platform for the box to sit on. These concepts I need to go back to the drawing board for.

One thing worth noting is that the designs on the box resemble "angel" figures--they're people with wings--so I want to make sure whatever I add to the box fits its current aesthetic. I think if the monkey is crafted well it will fit the aesthetic.

Virgil:3rd Idea SOFT and Hard

 As I have pondered what to do with this last project I started to think a bit more abstractly while still trying to think about my portfolio. 

Idea:

When given the funnel and the prompt, I couldn't get my mind off of something industrial. Then I started to think about silks and the threads that spiders(particularly the funnel web spider) us to make there homes. I came up with this idea of insects being caught in a mass of thread that when funneled down twists into a sort of quilt made of the thread and the bugs that got caught will be woven or Sewn into this sheet of fabric. 

Idea 2

Right now, I'm just leaning into this piece and just gonna work with whatever comes to mind. Taking full creative license and just trying to have fun with this last piece. I am pretty set on the idea of having  2 funnels mirror one another, much like an hour glass would having the center being disconnected as the soft fibers flood into the negative area.  I have also been playing around with the idea of some sort of brightly colored sphere being placed in the center of the two fuzzy funnels as if it is being drowned out by the incoming fuzz.

Clara Project 3

 

Megan Brown Project 3 Ideas

 I picked up two pieces for this project: one green vase and one small glass flower (?). I thought both of these pieces had very organic forms that I could play with, and low and beheld; I had so many ideas! I need help deciding which one to do. All of these sketches have shapes that I've been craving to play with, so I am struggling with which one I want to work with. 

#1 is relatively simple, and if I went with it, I would want to add a crazy texture or perhaps embroidery onto the tentacle(?) form. I would want to make sure the two tentacles on the "mouth" of the vase looked like they went down into the vase and were not connected. 

#2 Has a sort of hollow cage made out of soft material with nylon or some kind of transparent netting in between the supporting pillars. Inside I would like to create a soft fuzzy form that moves and flits about inside the cage. 

#3 Is inspired by an alien plant that catches passerby bugs/animals on the "tongue" and processes them down to the lower part of the carnivorous plant where it is digested, and the energy is used to grow the roots at the base.

#4 is also Inspired by an alien plant, but this one is more elegant and decorative than dangerous and predatory. 

My final sketch is using the second piece I picked up. I am picturing a tongue traveling all the way down the transparent tube the stem is made of. This tongue would be spiky and rough like a cat's, and sitting on it  would be some sort of tasty-looking berries/alien orbs (but they will look scrumptious!) 

Jessica Brennan Project 3

 For my third and final piece, I chose these Blue Amerbol tubes. Edison patented in order to compete with other cylindrical records in the early 20th century. These tubes were marketed as indestructible, compared to their black wax counterparts that would shatter after a couple of uses. Their cores are made from plaster and the outside coating is made of celluloid which is a plastic derived from plants. These tubes typically had popular songs of the time but special editions would have instructions for all sorts of household hobbies or music advertized as "cultured" like operas and orchestral arrangments. The length of a song on these records could be between 2 minutes or 4 and a half. Even though these tubes are virtually indestructible, their sound quality is horrendous compared to the black wax cylinders. they were only produced between the years 1912 and 1929 due to the competition and popularity of flat records and disks. 

My first idea is to create an almost visual representation of the sound quality of these tubes. The vertical tube represents how music is "captured" onto the celluloid tubes from being a pure sound that is then made physical. I was thinking that this piece would be 13" inches tall in height and I wanted to try to stiffen some sheer fabric in this undulating form mimicking a fluid. I would want to hand dye the gradient into it first before constructing this form. Underneath the two tubes I would put a series of black fibers almost like a puddle underneath to represent how some essence of the music is lost in the recording. Finally, I want to construct a part of a phonograph out of reused and found fabrics, sheet music, etc. I want this piece to be incomplete and only reference the old technology for listening to these records. I think the best approach would be to quilt my pieces together and then cut out pattern pieces and use boning for the seams and structure. I can also starch the fabric between each rib. The pieces that would make up my phonograph shape would only be 7" in length. 

My inspirations include Lee Bontcou and her style of re-using canvas and copper wire to create a rough-hewn aesthetic. I also was looking at the use of boning from the artist Elaine Louie in the slide show

Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1966

Project 3 Ideas_Lindsay Stewart

 I was recently researching the symbolic use of “light” in art and writing and came across this article, it had some really beautiful insights on the topic. The article focussed on its use in Jewish religious text. Some notes I took from it were:

• "Why has light been such a favorite symbol of God? Perhaps because light itself cannot be seen. We become aware of its presence when it enables us to see other things. Similarly, we cannot see God, but we become aware of God's presence when we see the beauty of the world, when we experience love and the goodness of our fellow human beings" (Eitz Hayim Commentary, p. 503). 

• "A candle of God is the soul of man" (Proverbs 20:27)

• “In this wintry season of darkness, we recognize both God's role and our own human efforts in bringing light into the world.”

• Our lights(souls) can Enlighten & Enliven our surroundings

As I ruminated on the concept of our souls being a light, I felt like it directly related to a series I am working on called, “Women of Understanding”. The idea of this series to highlight female figures along with the wisdom/strength/power they carry. After reading this I thought, “what is brought into view from the “light" of the women I’m influenced by?” Some ideas were (including symbols I would use to represent then): 

1. Loving home
2. Life - fruit trees
3. Beauty
4. Hope/peace…color green
5. Science…some implement from astronomy…Telescope? Celestial map?
6. Spiritual nature/strength...illustrate this through symbolic use of the color blue
7. Healing 
8. power/strength...use wings…ancient iconography used wings as a symbol of both power and protection
9. Perseverance - desert flower 
10. Industry - Beehive

I happened to pick up a lamp base at our trip to Bart’s and I thought what if instead of using it to emanate literal light, it could instead emanate symbols of the various things we are able to “see” because of the light the “Women of Understanding” themselves emanate?

This lamp would be made of the found base, cast paper flora, a cast paper celestial map, cast paper beehive, and fabric color elements. 

In a dream world I would curate a show with this topic and invite a myriad of artists to contribute. I imagine the work ranging from 2-d, 3-d, and the written word. Potentially a lamp like the one I am making could tie all the different works together.

Some inspirational photos

The female astronomers' research at Harvard allowed us to map the sky and learn that the universe is ever expanding 

Bees wings as a guide the casting 

My grandmother is the first figure I highlighted in this series

Project #3 Ideas Fernando

 

For this piece I want to incorparate my boat into a 2Dimensional portrait. The portrait will be made up of yarn shown in the fourth image down. I will have the giant octopus from the scene pull in the physical 3Dimensional found object toy boat. I will create the illusion of the Kraken pulling the boat into the "portrait". I will sculpt half the boat with yarn as if it is getting pulled into the piece. As for the giant octopus I will be creating felt tentacles to give that the illusion of 3Dimensional tentacles coming from the portrait.