Sculptures
Sweater Nest acrylic on wood 7.375x5.375
I've been having fun using acrylic in a somewhat sculptural way. With a little ingenuity you can make acrylic look fairly close to string. I'll be making many more of this type. They're sort of a bear, but I'm tweaking that process a little bit. Another process I'll be tweaking is my documentation of these paintings. Gotta get some more lights and standardize it a bit so my images don't look crummy. I'll get there.
limited options rope, wood, steel, fabric 84 x 84
This is a very large onesie (about seven feet by seven feet) that I made in my sculpture class. Ideally it would be installed in someone's yard, but I haven't found the right place yet.
There was a ton of work that went into this piece. Creating the clothespins weren't too difficult - just a bit of cutting and sanding the wood and bending, cutting, and welding some steel. But prior to making the onesie itself, I didn't know anything about sewing. Luckily my sister lent me her Singer and some literature on how to go about setting up the machine. I think I ended up putting in about 50 hours of sewing altogether. All the fabric came from Goodwill sheets and sweaters, and the buttons are round wooden display stands from Michael's that I stained.
If I can find the time and money I'd like to make several more of these, altering the color schemes and size of the patchwork to create a "platoon" of these onesies. The American flag on the right shoulder as well as the blue/green/purple patchwork is meant to partially mimic the digital camouflage uniforms that deployed troops wear these days. The patchwork is also referencing the practice of recycling garments - something perhaps more common with lower income families. Also referencing the poor is the penny-saving practice of drying clothes on a line .
Tension Machine steel umbrella arms, wood, rope, glass beads, toy train motor, fishing line 120x48x6
This semester I've been taking 3 studio classes, one of which is beginning sculpture. This class, like most of my classes are pretty open when it comes to assignments. For this piece we were given the idea of shelter as a starting point. The shelter I chose to work with was the umbrella. Using the graceful movement of many umbrella arms, I went about creating this automated structure. I do have a video clip that shows the movement of the piece, but I can't post it without paying Wordpress for that capability. So I may end up posting that video elsewhere. In the meantime, try to imagine this: the long, twisting assembly of the umbrella arms is attached to a rope belt of the pulley system. As the motor drives the belt around, the attached end of the assembly expands and contracts. Also, as the assembly goes round it catches itself on the red directional control arm of the toy train motor control. This causes the motor to groan and the assembly to bend. To the viewer, it looks like the assembly will snap in half or that something else might break, but at a critical moment the entire wood piece swings toward the assembly and in a thud the tension is released, allowing the motion to continue and the whole process to repeat itself over and over and over. Because the entire piece is flexible none of the pieces break.
I've shown this sculpture to several people, and there's always an audible gasp when the piece snags. What's interesting is that even though the viewer (including myself) may have seen it snag and safely release many times in a row, there's always a questioning of whether or not this time will be different. I think this might open new doors for some interesting sculptures and perhaps even in some 2D work that involve near failure. This questionable failure is present at every step of almost every endeavor, and the tension and release that comes with narrowly pulling something off that doesn't seem very likely is perhaps why we pursue anything. And the fact that a piece of art could allow someone to experience that over and over and over is a very compelling idea to me.