Sketch Drop, or What I Should be Doing in the Studio

And now a sketch dump, this is my tentative plan for fibers, where I have to dye a piece of cloth themed around  a season. I picked winter for no special reason and am planning to have black shibori vines/branches with a turquoise blue sky. The problem is that discharging dyes never returns the fabric back to white, and the professor likes fabric to have a massive amount of over laid pattern and dying, to the point of obliterating nice patterns you obtained on the first go. So I guess i'll just have to see how it develops on it's own...

But, while I was finishing working on this thing in my 2D Design class:

(can you spot all the craftsmanship errors I will be docked for? I can!)

An idea finally occured to me for jewlery design and here it is!

I've always wanted to do a swivel  locket since I saw one featured in a Lapidary Journal magazine, plus I did encounter an acorn on my earlier attempt to get inspired by walking through the park. The narrative portion of the project comes in with having a little tree inside the acorn when you open it up. that will be formed by  a copper wire, most likely with prongs to hold a wad of green fabric for leaves or perhaps threads.

The bail will be an oak leaf which I will probably have to shut up and patina it green, as much as I hate patinas. Thus I've already gone out and gotten spray lacquer for the occasion, to try and keep the patina from rubbing off too quickly. Currently this is my best plan to have a piece of jewelry that represents a walk in the woods, use of chasing and repousse, and a narrative all at once.

At least I'm closer to having a plan now and can finally begin work, woo.

Greentopia Aftermath

I nearly forgot to talk about how much fun the Greentopia Festival was and my piece on display!

Case in point me looking like a goober behind my piece in the "gallery" space which was the atrium of a bar/restaurant right in the heart of the festival area. Next to my piece is a work that is supposed to represent a tea pot and behind me is the first place winner. I have forgotten the title of it but over a period of 180 days the artist collected some of the garbage she threw out each day and put it in a jar. Thus, the line of jars on the free standing wall with a braided rope of plastic bags trailing down in front of it in a sort of showing-the-audience-how-much-trash-they-throw-out kinda way.

Here's a detail with patrons standing in front of it. I will say one thing and one thing only about it: after seeing a wall of jars at the Burchfield-Penney Art Museum in 2009 and a rack of them again in 2010 or so, it's safe to say jars are played out by now.

Third place was this coat rack welded together from scrap metals and discarded decorative metal fencing. The artist who did this had just discovered welding and was all excited about it in their artist's statement. In the background is another large scale work made of copper and brass which was 8 feet tall or so.

It was styled after an armillary sphere and rather nice looking, and reminded me my of my goal to make a metal garden statue of some kind for my mother. After this point however, my pictures take a turn for the scenic so here's the falls that gives the High Falls area of Rochester it's name:

All in all its was a fun day, and the rest of the festival was quite interesting too, ranging from food to music to purses made out of old plastic feed bags, plants for sale, and naturally jewelry made from old electronic bits.

Finally, here's a parting shot of my piece on display with the placard that had my artist's statement on it. Luckily I was able to keep it afterwards as a litle souvenir of my "win" in the contest. And that just about wraps up my day at Greentopia and the Recycled Art Competition.

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!