Probably ought to do a little end of the year wrap up on my semester, so lets break it down by class.
CAD: Nothing changed since the last post, look for more stuff by the end of January.
Jewelry:
A sad looking drum that needs revamping when it comes to the head. But I have a plan for fixing it later....
And the whole shebang for this semester. Rather disappointing isn't it? It was a bit of a bad semester all around for everyone in the class though, blargh. Hopefully the next go around will be better.
Fibers has eight of my 10 samples here for the final project and
a blurry cell phone picture of the final piece. It's about the Albright-Knox and how the classical architecture is at odds with the modern art in it. The columns are trying to contain the art (or the art is trying to break out). Anyway, the columns growing over the background remind me of the Konami shooter Lifeforce in which your piloting a ship through some sort of organic thing with walls that grow and get in your way.
Since they are so far back in the top image have some exclusive images of my two favorite samples. First is a nice modern art looking one that was the basis for the final (and also looks better) and the second one has a nice japanese garden railing reflecting in the pond look to it. All in all a great year for me in fibers; I'm tentatively looking forward to the next class im taking in it.
Digital Methods: the less said about it the better I suppose but heres some stuff anyway,
Random ad I had to cobble together into photoshop.
Stupid illustrator tools.
The silly old southwestern chair hut.
Probably the best pieces from the class are these laser cut cloud earrings. I'm happiest with how these came out despite the bad glue job, would laser cut again etc, etc. Which means I ought to look into buying an Adobe Suite, especially when coupled with the fact my copy of Photoshop is three versions out of date.
Overall its been a a fairly good semster in all the classes that aren't directly concerning jewelry, funny how that happened. Since I am in a celebratory mood and it's nearly Christmas let's end with OCRemix again and a Mario/Christmas music medly:
Well I attempt to relax over Thanksgiving a bit, I have been trying to come up with a pattern to deconstructively screen print on the last project. Due to time constraints and other issues it has been cut down to ten 12 inch by 12 inch samples and on a three by five foot final piece.
We are also to continue to work with our assigned building and the whole City Bits/ City Bytes theme, but I've really run out of ideas on how to use the Albright-Knox in a different way than on my devore project.
Since I want to involve the sculpture Light Matrix that sits on top of the Albright -Knox addition more in this piece than I did the last one, I went to the master of using dots, Maurce Binder's opening for Dr. No in 1962. Trivia time, the electronic beeping in the very beginning with the producer's credits is supposed to represent that Bond is a spy for the computer age. And, the dots themselves are actually price stickers stop motion animated.
Factoidial knowledge aside, I have sketches like these follwing themes as far afield as Space Invaders
and geology, but little to do with the art museum and Greco-roman revival architecture.
I'm no closer to an acceptable design for the final, but at least I've had fun going through all the old Bond intros.
In the past few weeks I have been something of an art machine cranking out piece after piece and being largely unsatisfied with it.
My fibers screen printing project here I thought looked very good but it was practically destroyed in a very schizophrenic critique. It was further evidence that whenever I like a piece everyone else hates it and when I hate it everyone else loves it. Case in point, jewelry:
These shawl pins based on trillium I wasn't really feeling. Plus I didn't think they were up to snuff for the student sale since I know every little problem with them. But, the class loved them backwards and forwards literally as they liked both sides of the piece. Still not sure as to whether to put these into the sale.
For 2D design we began by drawing an egg for homework after practicing shading spheres with no reference in class...
Then we had to draw junk from the professor's basement and our own objects separately, then cut them out and arrange them in an 11x14 rectangle...
Then we had to arrange the objects physically the way we did with the drawings...
then redraw it again and mat it for the final piece. No, I have no idea what this is suppsosed to teach me. All I know is that the only reason I can sort of draw is because of taking Drawing I my spohomore year with the difficult professor. Once again no clue and I'm bored in class working on it.
As a bonus here is my last project for 2D, a transition from a gun like object to a penguin which I some how got an A- on. I choose to believe that this qualifies me as half a Rembrandt. Now to gear up for the student sale, the texture project, and see how big a pain in the ass weaving supposedly is.
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.
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.
