When I find myself thinking about places that are important to me I immediately begin to focus on places that formed my most valuable personal relationships and memories. I think of home, grandma and grandpa's house, and memories that make me feel warm and fuzzy. In order to avoid these cliches, we were urged to create a flowchart that might reveal an idea that resides beneath the obvious places that are prominent in the brainstorming phase. I found myself thinking about temporary places and vacations. I questioned the permanence of a place and its significance to forming memories and relationships. I also pondered the amount of time needed to be in a place before it begins to mold your past and make an impact on your life. Through this conceptual dilemma of the temporary place, I began to think about building forts with my little brother. A fort can absolutely act as a place. We created the space and made it our own. We often spent free time in them, doing everyday things, but doing them in the fort. Sleeping in the fort was always, of course, the ultimate goal. I feel like we may have built forts more than the average siblings 2.5 years apart in age, but then again my brother and I always had a strong relationship....
I remember playing a board game with my brother, which ended in a disastrous explosion of competition. There was name calling, anger, and accusations galore. After the incident my parents sat us down and we had a long talk about the importance of our relationship as siblings. They stressed the fact that after they are gone, it will just be the two of us and if we don't get along, our family would be nothing more than a descriptive word for two people who are born of the same parents. I remember the urgency in their voices. The two of us sticking together is so important because we're all we've got after our parents aren't around. The conversation made an enormous impact on my desire to stay close to my brother. We were amazing friends and playmates as children. The idea of siblings disliking each other was completely foreign to me until I was exposed to friends who "hated" their little siblings and never wanted to be around them. I feel extremely fortunate that I have a friend who is also my brother and that we were able to share laughs and play together as kids in a sibling relationship far from common.
For this project, I intend to re-create one of the forts of my childhood. We always built the forts in our vast unfinished basement with the same series of blankets. I will use the same blankets that hold the musty smell of a concrete basement floor in order to enhance the sensory quality of the installation. I will construct it using chairs and clothespins and decorate it using the same props we continuously used time after time. I want the viewer to crawl into the space and experience my place as their place and hopefully be able to trigger their experiences of building forts as well.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Protest Project Critique
(PICTURE COMING SOON!)
The critique for my protest project went very well! The class was able to communicate the intentions behind the work and they enjoyed its overall attention grabbing quality. We talked quite a bit as a class about the importance of making work that has an extra spark that grabs the viewer and makes them want to look at the piece harder. The subject of protest and especially a subject close to home made it difficult to create a piece like this, that acts as translation. I think most of the works were informative and provided more descriptive aspects about the Bill in Wisconsin as opposed to creating some kind of translation between the work and the concept.
Fortunately, the class felt that my project provided compelling visual interest to the viewer while I provided subtle hints that allowed the work to act as translation. By realistically portraying the hands adorned with excessive jewelry I was able to translate the concept of the upper class controlling the middle class through the use of a puppeteer handle. The strings carefully loop around pennies with faces of middle class workers in both the public and private sectors, furthering the concept of control and identifying the pennies as a metaphor for the middle class and how they are viewed by the wealthy business corporations of America. The private sector and public sector faces are divided between the two handles to represent the fact that big business has manipulated the middle class to war with itself. It heightens the fact that we are responding exactly as they wish; turning against each other while their tiny percent of wealthy America remains sound in a time where cuts need to be made. The back of the pennies show Madison's capitol building to identify the local issue. It was suggested that my use of the transfer methods were well resolved throughout the piece since it is represented in both the transfer of the drawing and the transfer on the pennies. The 3D aspect to my piece was also suggested to be an added quality to the work overall. The fact that it wasn't just a drawing added to the viewer's immediate interest in the piece. I'm glad I decided to take the risk of making a 3D piece. I say risk since most of my attempts at three dimensional work often end up being fairly pricey at the cost of my failed designs. This piece, like I predicted, was made and then completely reworked before the final critique. Although it demanded quite a few resources, the time and money spent created something that I am quite proud of. I enjoy the face that I was able to create something different, since most of my work is protest, but in a much more subdued manifestation.
The critique for my protest project went very well! The class was able to communicate the intentions behind the work and they enjoyed its overall attention grabbing quality. We talked quite a bit as a class about the importance of making work that has an extra spark that grabs the viewer and makes them want to look at the piece harder. The subject of protest and especially a subject close to home made it difficult to create a piece like this, that acts as translation. I think most of the works were informative and provided more descriptive aspects about the Bill in Wisconsin as opposed to creating some kind of translation between the work and the concept.
Fortunately, the class felt that my project provided compelling visual interest to the viewer while I provided subtle hints that allowed the work to act as translation. By realistically portraying the hands adorned with excessive jewelry I was able to translate the concept of the upper class controlling the middle class through the use of a puppeteer handle. The strings carefully loop around pennies with faces of middle class workers in both the public and private sectors, furthering the concept of control and identifying the pennies as a metaphor for the middle class and how they are viewed by the wealthy business corporations of America. The private sector and public sector faces are divided between the two handles to represent the fact that big business has manipulated the middle class to war with itself. It heightens the fact that we are responding exactly as they wish; turning against each other while their tiny percent of wealthy America remains sound in a time where cuts need to be made. The back of the pennies show Madison's capitol building to identify the local issue. It was suggested that my use of the transfer methods were well resolved throughout the piece since it is represented in both the transfer of the drawing and the transfer on the pennies. The 3D aspect to my piece was also suggested to be an added quality to the work overall. The fact that it wasn't just a drawing added to the viewer's immediate interest in the piece. I'm glad I decided to take the risk of making a 3D piece. I say risk since most of my attempts at three dimensional work often end up being fairly pricey at the cost of my failed designs. This piece, like I predicted, was made and then completely reworked before the final critique. Although it demanded quite a few resources, the time and money spent created something that I am quite proud of. I enjoy the face that I was able to create something different, since most of my work is protest, but in a much more subdued manifestation.
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