White Ephalumps

For our final, we're to make a white elephant gift with skills we've learned from a forgotten or rare skill. My girlfriend Kati knows how to knit, so I asked her to show me how.

It actually wasn't too hard! I feel like I took to it faster than sewing. My goal was to make a phone cozy, but I guess it is more of an all purpose bag.

I particularity enjoy the makeshift solution of putting multiple buttons on there! We actually lost the one we bought for it.


I really hope whoever ends up with it likes it! But don't tell them before they see it;)

School Spirit

I made an intervention happen last week! This is the thing I was planning.

I gave away these cardboard shirts to fans with very little pocket money.


It was a really cool thing, and the first guy gave me a beer in exchange. I'd say it was a good day.


Here's is how I presented it in class. It's pretty snazzy right?

T-Shirt Shop

I'm planning a thing.

I've never ran a print shop before. It's pretty fun! Stay tuned...

Finally (and not so Finally)

We are gearing up for finals. For once I am pretty certain of what I want to make!


We worked using a 3D mill, and it was rad. Rhino was a super sleek program, and allowed us to make a cool test object to make molds from. I am really pumped for this, ad I think a lot can be done.

Maps

So we had been given a project, wherein we would artisicatally map out an area in the Unvinersity district on the unversity of washinton, in some sort of arttistic fashion, keeping in mind that a map is always drawn by human hands and has room for vision, interpretation and error.

I was assigned this little area right here.

The stadium is complete now of course.

I travelled all around this zone and took a great many pictures, but in the end did nothing wit that data. In addition to the pictures I took an audio recorder and put it in my pocket. It took a while to come to the conclusion of it, but I became really interested in finding a way to map out the ambient sound. I was thinking of concepts like the audio tour and those little maps you'd find in children's museums were you could lift a flap and press a button to hear a sound clip of the animal or subject it was explaining. I ended up settling on the latter.

Under each of these flaps was a little audio button. I made it very childish looking as though a kid were to map out a make believe land and play games in it. The fanciful descriptions were fun to write.

In the end, I think the audio and visual elements conflicted with each other. People were interested in pressing the buttons and hearing what sounds came from them but had little interest in looking at the images or descriptions. It could have been made very detailed and not so childish, but I think the result would have been the same. Ideally, I would have loved to make a map grid-ed out with sounds from each specific square of the areas. I was trying to save some money on the ordeal though, and I don't think te amount of buttons necessary to make it happen would have shipped to me on time for critique. It was suggested that may not be in my style, but I think I decide that! I am not always messy, and I would like to show that.

Wire we doing this?! Don't be a chicken!

The crit has passed me by at this point.


This is the end result of my endeavors. No one had much to say about it. I realize that I needed more effort to make the frame concrete, and extremely solid in comparison to the sticks that were made by twisting the wire and and adding abica. I tried to use cotton to replicate the faux paper of the object and to have stark contrast with the abica on the sticks.

I think it is alright, and I am happy with it barring my slipshod solutions to use the inner part of the frame to hold the cotton in. It was late when I got to it, and I was getting tired of mucking around with the cotton that would not stick. It's no excuse, but man, cotton is the pits to work with.


Ugh. I often feel like I'm not as skilled as others in class, at least when it come to structure and craftsmanship. I think the things I have made do have a lot of style and attitude. They have a sort of exaggerated and melty quality, sort of like Claus Oldenburg. I would like to get better at the details everyone else in the class is so great at, but maybe I should not ignore the base appeal of that, even if it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Oh Yeah? You and what Armature?

We're gonna be dippin' stuff!

Specifically chicken wire. It's an ornery material, but man does it pick up Abica beautifully. The cotton seems more of struggle, but I guess well work through it.

The objective of the assignment is to play around with the opposites on inside/outside, geometric/freeform, and natural/manmade. I have seen these kind of opposites things before, and we even talked about it being a cliche in photography class. I hope not to apporach it that way, but it is pretty hard not to. My object is some kitschy overpriced frame nick-nack I found right outside my house and multiple sticks that were on the ground(we had some nice blustery days recently!). We'll see how it goes.

Boogity Boogity

So I guess I never said why we were working with felt anyway. It was to make these interesting mask and alter egos for ourselves.

I chose something of an Anti-Hero, for as much as I try to stay the ever positive one, I have strong convitions deep down.




Working with the felt was an immense challenge for me. I think it was mainly because I became impatient and did not put enough layers on the material. Or it was mainly because I put far too much water on it and had to spend the better part of two days drying it out. It was just mainly a mess, that I stayed up a good few late nights to fix.



Crit turned out okay though, and people kind of understood what I was going for. I feel really bad though, because I think it could have been great, and could still be great. It would just take a lot of extra tailoring...

The Fruit of Naked Sheep

Felting is weird.

I guess I hadn't given much though as to how this process was done by hand before, though I knew there was a strong craft and skill to it.

In my first attempt, I don't seem to have much control over it. We'll see if that changes a bit over time.

Bustering

So we were able to take a field trip to the Frye to see the exhibit on Buster Simpson. He's an extremely fascinating guy, with a large body of work. I know we were there mostly to learn about his interventions even though there was a lot of gallery work.



I particularly enjoyed his Hudson River Purge, wherein he threw in limestone antacids for the bay, neutralizing it's acidic Ph balance. It's very humorous and I think that it is a quite successful intervention that bring your attention to the environmental problems of the modern world. Seeing the video as a projection, almost an animated gif, worked well for the gallery and makes it almost never ending.

Busters' Woodman, the man walking with sticks, didn't appeal to everyone, but I get it. Here's a guy actively struggling with his task and he is pretty much being ignored wholesale. I feel like I do that a lot, in regards to seeing people struggling with their loads, be they homeless or not. I feel guilty on many an occasion, since I think I could help, but I suppose the problem is that once you start helping, people kind of expect you to help whenever they need it, which can be troublesome for you.

I am getting off topic somewhat though. The trip was very enlightening, and while it is still kind of tough to make those distinctions between performance art and social practice, seeing Buster Simpson's work does solidify some of the ideas we should be thinking about.

Complaint Choir (part 2)

The second part of our complaining exercise was to take other peoples clips and intermix them into something interesting. The class seemed to like mine. I feel it was just a few seconds too long but I liked messing about in final cut pro. Take a look and see what you think!

Spend the Hours, Talking, talking

We're doing interviews. The first was with my mom. It was a bit strange, talking to her so formally with structured questions, but we got through it. I asked her things about animation, which she knows some about but not nearly as much as me.


The next was going on the beat with a couple classmates of mine. Here's an edited clip of the interview with guy we ended up talking with. He was really cool and receptive.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B10mTUG-8vFIYlRIOUVyNHZRMzA/edit?usp=sharing

Complaint Choir ( part 1)

So this project is a beautiful thing where a ton of citizens sing harmoniously about their issues.



We've been asked to make 10 complaints about whatever, hopefully about local or student based issues. I don't really like to complain so this is tough for me!



Just went for a general Youtube quick cut kind of thing. I hope that it is entertaining despite my bitching =P

Of Hangers and the Shirts that Wear Them

I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't hopping back onto this blog because of my current Art class requiring some kind of online diary. However, that doesn't mean I can't make the most of it.


So my first project for my Sculpture class was to take a shirt and transform it into something sculpturally interesting. We started with a group project, and my partner and I came up with this little thing.

By little, I mean it's actually pretty large. About 3 feet tall, transformed by  wood plank and some rubber bands. We did this in under 20 minutes in fact, and I think it was quite successful.




When asked to come up with something else in my own time using more sewing skills, I struggled to come up with an idea I loved. I'm not super familiar with 3D art, and sometimes it takes me a while to wrap my head around it.

Once I bit the bullet and actually got to making, I found some coat hangers( I bought them in excess in preparation for my move into my new apartment). I was curious how I could  cut them up to make a neat structure that the shirt could then wrap around.

The coat hangers themselves ended up pretty compelling, but I could not find a way to cut up and wrap the shirt around it in a way I was happy with, be it due to my lack of skills or time (probably a little of both!). I'd like to revisit the project again at some point, as I feel my end result did not bring out the potential of what it could be.