On the Bench

Continuing my recent trend of drive by posting, here's whats on my bench (literally) currently. I have the pitch bowl set up and finally got my chasing and repousse tools polished on the buffing wheel.



Aren't they pretty? Besides actual classwork I've also gotten started on making the interlocking triangle pins for the student sale in December, some cam be seen waiting to be cut out on my bench pin.

To end this mad post here's a close up arty shot of my 2D project. I haven't done much with that because I am never near my project and a window when there is still daylight outside. My plan is still to trace my pattern on to good bristol paper, if only I had my lightbox! Perhaps I shall get up early tommorow; until then good night!

Fabric Follies

I haven't made much progress in terms of jewelry, other than setting up my pitch bowl, but I have finished off the 12 dyed samples of fabric for fibers I and have just enough time to show them off!

First here are some slightly boring swatches dyed solid colors, with a 15 by 30 inch piece that was bound around a stick and had dye applied to it. And no, none of these are particularly outstanding either.

Next are some more colorful examples done by binding fabric in various way, as you would with tie dye. I particularly like the green and blue ones and thus never applied more dye to them.

And here are a few pieces done by clamping wooden forms around the folded fabric. Clamping is not my favorite technique for dying but it serves its purpose I guess

Finally, my favorite technique of the bunch, shibori. It's a Japanese technique traditionally dyed dark blue where you sew the fabric with a running or whip stitch, than pull it tight and tie it off before dyeing. It took me a while to prepare these since I'm not the greatest at sewing, but the results were worth it!

Not everything turned out great in dying fabric, this one sadly got nailed with mold sitting damp in my locker. Now I know not to do that one again.

Small side note this is what I am working on for 2D design, repeated abstract shapes to form an 8 by 8 inch composition that has an ambiguous figure/ground relationship. At least it's going better than the first project which I got a grade of meh on.

And thus concludes the exciting tour of recent artwork that is not jewelry, I hope to have gotten somewhere by next week.

Design is a Process

Its taken me two days to come up with a composition for my 2D design class project. Part of this is because I am not very good designing at two dimensional works, partly because the professor hasn't explained anything about composition other than what the elements and principles of design are. Thus going on my spotty knowledge of proper composition (rule of thirds) and my four years of art history analysis I present you with an essay in pictures and haiku.

Drawing all class
The professor likes these lines
Due next Tuesday!

Broke down and sketched
So much for intuition
Naming it "Cellular Strands"

Too many lines, Not enough!

Trying to be Jean Arp.

If all else fails,

Make it look like a plant.

Perhaps it's scale!
Let's redraw all these lines.
Committed to dots and circles.

Does it look good or bad!?

Text an artist friend

"It's too detailed, they like minimal"

Reject pile's gotten huge

I think I'm on to some thing here...

What if I did this?

Dots ARE too complex,

Give up, go to plan B

Scribbly not-arabic.

Flip it around front to back,
Add this, subtract that,
Artist friend approves.

Oh God I like it horizontal,
She likes it vertical,
Either way it's "Butterfly" now.

Four people approve,
Only one majors in art.
Pretty pretty presentation,
It's done!

News Roundup

First and foremost in my news of the week is that the contest I talked about entering here came to a result, and I got second place!! Besides $500, I got quite a nice line for the resume, I just don't know whether to file it under awards or exhibitions, since the tiara will be on display the weekend of September 17th as well. and according to the (probably) form email I got the judges were impressed with my work, which is a huge compliment given that the panel consists of an artist, an illustrator, a person from ARTISANworks, the owner of a gallery, and the Memorial Art Gallery's exhibitions director. So overexcited!

Less exciting is what's currently going on in my studio classes. My theme of a walk in the woods went down fairly well in jewelry though it could accidentally make a left turn into the idea of weeds. I still don't know what I am going to do for the chasing repousse project, for which my pitch bowl etc. arrived and I am working on tools for.

This is some of the results from my first attempt at true chemical dying of fabric. I'm particularly fond of the one on the right, as I was not expecting it to turn out at all. There's six other pieces brewing in the fabric studio and some of those I am even less sure about how they will look.

This is the low budget re-creation of what I am doing in  2D design, which is drawing various types of lines on paper that will then be cut out and arranged into a composition on some illustration board. It seems like it's adding an extra step to the process, but I can see the point, being that the professor wants us to be able to rearrange and play with the line elements before we glue them down. Above is one of the lines I came up with that the professor liked. Still, the class is tending towards the boring side and reminding me how middling I am at two dimensional works.

The goal for next week is to be less harried in making a blog post, since between work and classes I don't have enough time to think!

Whimsy!

To lighten my mood I've read a bunch of Moomin comic strips and dearly wished they had been part of my childhood. They are quite nicely done by Finnish-Swede illustrator Tove Jansson who had quite a long career. I'm liking her deceptively simple style in both Moomin and other works she's done and am genuinely curious about her stories, so it may mean buying the book collections in the future. And how can you not love characters named Moomintroll, Moominpappa, Mooominmamma,Snorkmaiden, Snufkin, Too-Ticky, The Groke, etc? Until Christmas, an image dump!

New Semester, New Theme

I spent all summer thinking up a new theme for this semester of jewelry resulting in A Walk in the Woods. Although it is yet another nature theme I hope that it is enough of a variation to be different. The key to this is to look at the theme as nature tamed, as in scaled down to the things in our own backyards and parks. A quick example of this is my only idea so far for this, some Coke bottle caps arranged around a Pepsi cap by means of wire and rivets in order to resemble queen ann's lace:

        

This = This, apparently.

But this has nothing to do with the actual first project of the the year which is chasing and repousse. I'm looking forward to properly learning the technique this time, and am even enjoying making the tools, but I'm not as enthused about the project itself. I have never really enjoyed making narratives in art which is probably some strange result of trying to come up with a uniquely interesting comic strip when I was a kid, the naturally being what the project is on. So far all I have is a necklace that has repoussed elements cycling through the stages of a forest fire. To get ideas I've quasi-coincidentally bought a book called Weeds at Border's liquidation sale.

See? It's True!

Thus I have plenty of time to meditate on this problem (and read a book) until my pitch bowl arrives around September 7th!

Sketchbook, Smetchbook

Ahh sketchbooks, the working horse of the art student. I meant to post this forever ago, on the occasion of my cracking in to a new sketchbook back in April and, at the same time, found my old sketchbooks dating back to high school while cleaning out the house. Plus, I wanted to show off to the echo chamber of the Internet what grew from that original assignment in ninth grade to paint the cover of my sketchbook, something I normally hated doing. Thus my two excuses for not posting this lovely material sooner are as follows:

1. An intensive four day a week, eleven week long internship at the city film festival.

2. The draft of this post was too long winded and drawn out in describing the covers and my mind set when I made each one and it was getting too boring, even for me.

Now that the internship is over and that I have been inspired by Something Awful.com's One Sentence Reviews of games in their Video Game Article section I have decided to describe each sketchbook with a haiku. Why haiku? Because three lines gives me more room to describe and keeps it short at the same time, and I haven't written any silly poetry lately. So enjoy the loose haikus and the small look into my psyche over the years, just don't count the syllables!



Dragon holding the world
Gonna smash it on the rocks (what rocks?)
Such an edgy little freshman

Sophisticated sophomore
Octopuses are a thing now I guess
Pink coral, stencil brushes are fun!

 

 

 

A small fancy sketchbook for college

Oh God do people think I'm a hipster now

Just 'cause I bought a Moleskine?



Ha ha ha top fortune cookie so true

Where has all the money gone?

Third year of school

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laid the flowers out bad

How will I live with this!?

Tiny parrots fix everything