Inflatable Sculptures

Upside down Ice Cream Cone!Genetically Engineered Carrot!!Zippo!

Cuttlefish Castings!

Congrats on all of your successful cuttlefish castings!

Simmons Family Tree

A mother and wife at 19, I quickly found myself in a life quite different from the one I had for the 18 years previous. At 21, I am still trying to understand the roles I play in my family. Laundry is one major bone of contention. I have never really liked doing laundry, and now I am in a situation where I have to do my laundry, my daughter's laundry, and my husband's laundry. This piece is an expression of the ever-growing pile of laundry that I must deal with, as well as the roles the members of my family take.

Guinea Pig

For my modular unit and repetition project I used procedural face masks to make a guinea pig. I sewed together over 50 masks with thread, used the earloops from the masks on the face and embroidered on details of the eyes, mouth, and nose. My reasoning for doing a guinea pig is because I do not support animal testing and because I simply really like guinea pigs. This guinea pig is like a plush toy, one that is very soft and comfortable to lay your head on. It represents how we see animals and products and never see what some animals have to go through for certain products to be "safe". It is also for animals that undergo other research and testing not directly involved with toxicology, cosmetic, and drug testing.

Everything

My piece is a hand sewn pillow made entirely out of cigarette butts, thread, and a few buttons. The reasoning behind the piece is the symbols that cigarettes represent to me. To me cigarettes represent my day to day cycles: the people, the places, the situations. These habitual cycles of events provide false comfort, as cigarettes do. Knowing the predictability of every day events may seem comforting, but in actuality it provides false comfort.

Becoming

My modular unit project was created using multiples of yarn patterns and also buttons. The meaning behind the piece is simple. It represents my climb from childhood to manhood. I felt like yarn and buttons would be effective in creating a nostalgic childlike feel. The downside of the project is that I now have arthritis in both hands.

Music to My Ears

For my project I decided to make a dress with band logos and lyrics all over it. The two things I'm the most passionate about in my life are fashion and music so I wanted to put them together to create something that would describe me better than anything. For my repitition I used band logos and lyrics scattered randomly over the piece.

"Fading Away"

For our repetition assignment I decided to create a piece that shows how we can remember certain dreams, or memories so clearly and other times we have no recollection of them. I also wanted to show how things can mean so much to us at one point and later on we cant even remember what the meaning was or why we liked the object. For this assignment I made a reliquary that holds objects that have or have had great meaning to me at one point in my life. I wanted to incorporate something that I have a strong interest in now; painting, which is why I used the paint dots to represent the dreams. There are way more than 100, more like 1,000 paint dots covering most of the head

Melting Childhood

For my repetition project I choose to use colorful birthday candles to appear slowly melting into basically nothing at all. This was to represent childhood life then and now. Back then, I remember all the neighborhood kids, including me and my little cousin, would always be outside playing; riding our bikes, skateboarding, making "potions" and a lot more outside activities and nowadays it seems like children don't play outside as much with all the new gaming sytems that are out and that's very sad to me.

What You See

For this piece my object of repetition was sewing pins. I used close to 400 sewing pins to create the eyes out of different colors of yarn and string. The reason I used sewing pins is because i sew. In combination with the yarn i felt like mapping out the design of the eyes was a lot like mapping out life, planning some places to go, adapting to others, going round in circles, and ending up somewhere you're supposed to be. I pushed the pins into slabs of wood to illustrate how life grounds us. I depicted eyes because eyes are a very common theme in my art, I view them as a door way to the soul. I made them look somewhat like my eyes because I believe that the way we find ourselves is by living our life.

Repetition Project

For my repetition project, I decided to make a bracelet and a pair of earrings out of more than 100 guitar picks. The guitar picks relate to me because I have been playing the guitar for almost 2 years and I really love music.

Modular Units and Repetition

(Philip Toledano)

See the assignment sheet for the Modular Units and Repetition Unit on the sidebar. Project Due November 17th!
Get inspiration by browsing the artist links under the "Modular Units and Repetition" section as well.(Liza Lou)(Mindy Sue Meyers)(Tara Donovan)(Eunsuk Hur)

Inflatables!

Next project: Inflatables!
Check out the links to the right for info on inflatables. Also, here is a great art21 video on Tim Hawkinson's inflatable sculptures. Watch the whole thing here.

Cuttlefish Casting

What a relief!!! Instead of cardboard, we will be doing a carved relief and metal casting for our relief project!!!

For a great tutorial on cuttlefish casting check out this tutorial by metalsmith, Catherine Chandler.

Hair Metal

Sorry for the poor photograph. I wish I could see everyone's pieces today, but my daughter is home sick!

When I was designing this piece, I really wanted to emphasize the importance that sites can have on particular pieces. In this case, my piece would absolutely be incomplete without resting on my head, as my hair needs to wrap around and through the wire. Hair Metal also serves as documenting a particular moment in time. Every time I take it out of my hair and re-wrap it, the finished outcome can never be repeated exactly. It also is unique to my head and my hair length at any particular time.

We live in a time where it is extremely easy to change your hair style and color, even on a day to day basis, which not only shapes our wardrobes, but the opinions that people have about us.

Garden of Eden

For my project I was inspired by the Garden of Eden. I made a vine that wraps around someones neck and leg to show how how temptation can get you in a chokehold and not let you go making it hard to resist. The materials I used were wire, beads, spray paint, ribbon, and glue. I used thick wire to make the vines and smaller gauge wire to wrap around it. I attatched beads to the smaller gauge wire and spray painted the entire vine green. To make the flowers i used wire and glued ribbon to the underside. I spray painted three flowers toward the center of the vine to represent the forbidden fruit in the Garden.

Man made flowers

The idea i had behind this project was to make metal flowers. There are 4 flowers and there steams coming out. It attaches to your leg and goes across and around someones whole leg. The found object was vines going around the steams.
In cities they have man made nature, no true nature. My metal flowers show that show how humans have almost controlled nature in the way they want it to be and look. The fake vines show that humans try really hard to cover it up that isnt not man made but it so obvious that it is.
Objects Used
wire metal
fake plant/ leaves

Wire Sculpture Project

Remember we have critique for the wire sculpture project on Tuesday, September 29th. Come ready to wear your piece!

(piece above by Polly Verity)

Cardboard Structures

Here are some hilights from the cardboard structure group projects...

Check out our flickr site for the rest.