Happy Halloween!!

My sister is in town to visit and for our annual Halloween celebration!! YAY!!! We made special Halloween muffins because we have two exciting day trips planned for this weekend. I’ll tell you all about them and post lots of pictures when we get back.

I thought it would be fun to post pictures of our muffins in honor of Halloween. We also made our traditional Halloween chili and chex mix. We are going to a friend’s Halloween party and then have a movie marathon planned tonight so we can both get some homework done. Happy Halloween!!!

Past Present Future

This is my final project for my Artist as Designer/Designer as Artist class. We had all of our critiques and the last day of class was today. Thanks Cat Chow for traveling to Savannah for the past seven weeks to teach our class. It was such a great experience!

The title is Past Present Future. It’s about past, present, and future memories. I used each compartment in the doll trunk that I bought to represent these three eras of time.

The left side of the trunk represents the past. I created a frame like structure that I hung in the back part of the trunk. I thought about past memories and how they are suspended in time so I made a cameo form that represents my memories suspended in time. I started twisting this wire around and flattening part of it out so that it was this quirky “memory”. It is made up of precious crystals, beads, and pearls wrapped in copper tubing.

The right side of the trunk represents the present. I made forms out of copper wire that have the characteristics of the iron work in Savannah. I’ve been thinking a lot about iron work because it is a memory of a cast. This works well with the concepts of memory that I’ve been working with. Then, I made dream catcher forms out of different colored wire and place beads wrapped in copper tubing in each “memory catcher”.

The small compartment in the trunk represents the future. I made a mock drawer out of copper mesh. Then I placed the “memory catcher” forms in the drawer along with one beaded cameo. This represents what is waiting for me in the future. Some things are planned and some and unknown. They are not fully developed and are not ready to come out of this drawer. Some day they will join the rest of the memories, but right now they safe and waiting in this drawer. The presence of the future is always leering in the background, but will not be completely understood until the time is right.

Here are some pictures from the rest of my day! Just a little inspiration from Savannah.

Sneak Peek

Here’s a sneak peek of what I’m working on!!

Dichotomy

I would like to share something that we are discussing in my Artist as Designer class with Cat Chow.

“Dichotomy between/of: the conceptual and the three-dimensional, the scientific and the romantic, the rational and the irrational, the geometric and the organic, the abstract and the figurative, the simple and the complex, the rigid and the pliable, resisting and letting go, the permanent and the ephemeral, the horizontal and the vertical, feeling/emotion and physical form, joining and cutting, construction and destructive, destruction and reconstruction, breaking and repairing, tenderness and violence, love and hate, harmony and conflict, frustration and happiness, cusses and failure, birth and death, youth and age, the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group, the one and the other, the private and the public, sculpture and environment, art and life, addition and subtraction, interiority and exteriority, verticality and horizontality, process and object, creative vision and the final result, natura naturans and natura naturata, the passive and the active, mind and matter, repetition and difference.”

- Louise Bourgeois

I read an interview with Louise Bourgeois from the book PressPLAY: Contemporary Artists in Conversation and I found it really interesting to read her thoughts about memory. I don’t necessarily relate to her views on this subject directly but I do connect to it at some level. It has certainly made me think about memory from a different perspective. The one thing that sticks in my mind is how she stated that she wanted to give her work permanence. I really relate to that statement and have wrote down that exact sentence several times.

I have really enjoyed reading interviews in this book and definitely recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary artists. It has been really beneficial to read about different artists’ thought processes.

In Progress

I’ve been working on my final project for my Artist as Designer/Designer as Artist class this week. I’ve also been thinking a lot about a few questions that I have: What do memories actually mean to people?, Why are people drawn to them?, What is the best way of interacting with my memory objects?, and How should I present my ideas. So far, I’ve come up with memories remind people of happy moments or experiences that they may or may not experience again. These are different to everyone based on their own personal life experiences. Some people think memory is really important and some don’t. I’m one of those people who thinks memory is extremely important and very interesting (Obviously!! haha).

A few ways that I’ve been thinking about presenting my ideas are: using suitcases, trunks, cosmetic cases, jars, and special boxes. Basically I’m trying to create an environment that my audience can relate to. I’ve also found out through my survey that sight, smell, and sound are the three most important senses when it comes to remembering a specific memory. So ideally I would combine these three senses and present my objects in one of the possible ways that I just listed to create the best environment. I’m still thinking and working a lot of things out, but for this final I’ve come to a conclusion. I bought a vintage doll trunk to use as my space for my project. Then once I sat down with all my materials and my trunk, ideas started to flow. I’m also working with the dichotomy of a memory in terms of past, present, and future. So here are some of my in progress pictures.

It’s coming together really well! Feel free to comment, leave feedback, or answer the above questions.

The Simple Pleasures of Life

Today I really enjoyed my walk home from class. It was such a relaxing, in the moment experience. I felt like I needed to get “lost” (in a good way) lost in the city, lost in my mind (to take a short break from thinking about my work), lost in the culture of Savannah. At the beginning of the quarter our Studio Issues class read an article from A Field Guide for Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnik. I sort of revisited this article last night as I was organizing all of my articles from past and present classes. It was a good article to start the quarter off with and I’ve thought about it throughout the quarter at various times.

Anyways, back to my walk home. So for maybe twenty to thirty minutes I reached out and grabbed this opportunity to get lost and enjoy myself. I stopped at the Pinnacle Gallery and it was one of those days where I didn’t intend to walk by, it just happened. Its always fun to see what I walk by and what places I decide to go in.

Danny Simmons: Spiritual Rhythms is at the Pinnacle Gallery until November 23rd. I was attracted to the colors that he chose for his paintings. They were beautiful shades of blended color and texture that cannot be captivated in a photograph. I didn’t even attempt to take a photograph because I knew this experience was about what I was seeing then and there, and what I would remember when I left. In some of the paintings I was captivated by the mood created by color and the close up views of these colors that I was attracted to. I could have stood at one painting for hours just looking at the soft texture and color.

Two of the quotes in his exhibition book really stood out to me: ” Vibrant abstract forms are joined to one another by a continuous black outline, and they seem to dance upon painterly monochromatic surfaces.” and ” Simmons’ paintings and drawings do not have the forced notion of ‘what you see is what you get’; they possess and ‘inner necessity’, giving viewers the opportunity to respond in the same subjective spiritual manner in which the work is made.” I responded to these quotes the most with my experience at the Pinnacle Gallery. If you get a chance you should stop by because the experience at the Gallery is more inspirational than the photographs online. Click here for more about Danny Simmons.

One more thing and then I’ve got to get to get back to work. One of my professors posted this for our class to read and I thought it might help those of you out there who haven’t accepted this blogging world yet. It’s an insightful article that I thought I would share. It has even helped me to understand and think about blogs in a new way. “Why I Blog” by Andrew Sullivan. So I’ll leave you with that and enjoy the weekend!

More Material Explorations

Here are some more material explorations that I’ve been working on today.

These studies are helping me figure out what I want to do for my final project in my Artist as Designer/Designer as Artist class. It’s due on Halloween along with two other deadlines so you probably won’t see me very often for the next week. I’m still in the exploring stage and hopefully by Friday I figure out exactly what I’m doing.

Material Explorations

I’ve been exploring with my new materials every day this week.

I still have lots of possibilities to explore and am going to start using tin foil as a quick “metal mesh” so I don’t use up my copper mesh with experimenting. It’s a challenge to sew with most of the metal threads so I’m going to start couching them down with other types of embroidery floss. I really like the rich coloring of the copper mesh. I’m also going to start playing around with patinas so see if I like an antiqued look better. I’ve been thinking about and looking at iron work in Savannah while I’ve been making these samples as well as vintage frames, cameos, embroidery techniques, and the Victorian era. It’s been fun and here are some of the samples that I have so far.

Finished Embroidery

I finished my first hand embroidery piece. YAY!!! Hopefully this piece will have two friends by Halloween so I can enter them in the Stitch Spectacular show. I don’t have a title yet. I think I’ll decide on a title once I finish the other two.

New Materials and Excitement!!

Today after class I went to Primary Art Supply and got new materials to work with.

Some of the feedback in my critique last Thursday was to work with metal, wire, and copper mesh.

In my class with Cat Chow, she suggested the same thing for my final project. I’m really excited to add something new to my work!! I also went to @ Home Vintage General which is one of my favorite stores in Savannah.

They had some vintage metal thread and embroidery floss from France which I saw last week and I figured now would be a good time to buy it. So stay tuned because I’ll probably be posting samples from these materials soon. Also, check out @ Home Vintage General’s Blog.