makin' some art

Now that portfolios are FINALLY done I've had a lot of free time to do what I want. I worked on the wheel for a couple of classes and threw a vase, two mugs and a bowl. It was really nice to be back on the wheel again after so long. Last class I felt like hand-building so I decided to try and make a pinch-pot giraffe. Quinn kept trying to attach a clay penis to it and Lexie kept trying to get clay dust on me while I was working on it so I didnt get very far... but here's what I have so far!

I'm really excited for Pat Horsley to come on wednesday.
WAAHOO ART!!

THINGS TO DO!!

busy busy busy. I finally got the last of my greenware into the kiln yesterday, which is a relief. But there is still SO MUCH to do before next thursday! Once my 3 baskets come out of the kiln I need to glaze them asap and get them fired once again. Also, some genius from beginning ceramics broke one of my bisque baskets... so thats another setback. But ITS OKAY because this weekend I'm going to make a couple of wire baskets to finish up my concentration!!! I'm soooo ready to be done with all of this -_- I forgot to take a picture of what I've been working on but here's a bunny rabbit:

HAPPY ALMOST EASTER

baskets baskets baskets baskets baskets baskets baskets

BASKETS!!! I <3 baskets!!! Here's one that I'm still working on... I'm trying to use a more uniform technique of piping instead of just doing random scribbles. I need to figure out how to reinforce the form though.... its REALLY sketch right now. I might have to start over but i'm going to try and save this one tomorrow!!

I QUIT......!!%$&%($^!

I'm finally starting to get caught up on all my work, but I still have a long ways to go and a lot of work to do. I spent three hours working on art yesterday, which was really nice. BUT ANYWAYS I'm really sick of my concentration because everything keeps breaking!! Yesterday, I was glazing my ONLY woven basket and I accidently dropped it..................

I feel like I should be used to things breaking by now but this REALLY sucked. But I don't actually quit. I will just have to work even harder if I want to complete my portfolio in time -_- WISH ME LUCK!

Sometimes I Suck....

Soooo this is my first blog of the semester. It's not that I don't enjoy blogging... I just genuinely forget to do my blog EVERY week for the past two months. oops. I"ve actually been traveling though (that's my other excuse). Two weeks ago I went to New York for a conference at the United Nations and had the time of my life. We had a ton of time to sight see, so I was able to visit a few art museums while I was there. The art scene in New York is AMAZING and really inspiring. I loved going to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here are a few pics that I took at MoMA....



The first picture is an original Andy Warhol. The second one is a "sculpture" of window blinds--the steriotypical epitome of the term "modern art". Ridiculous. But funny. 

Goodbye Amy, Hello Whitney



Today was Amy's last day at school. I know she decided she wasn't going to cry, but by the end of class I could tell that it was really hard for a lot of us to keep back the tears. Although I am REALLY sad that she is leaving, I am happy for her, her family, and her soon-to-be addition to the family, Blake!!!!! I wish her well and hope that she comes to visit us!!

Whitney, our new teacher, seems SUPER nice. I can't wait to get to know her better. I hope she will learn to love our class for all of our odd quirks.... I think she will. Lexie and I decided that we would make a pact with the other AP3D kids to stand up against the evils of the art teacher in the class next to us who will remain unnamed...............

ANYWAYS I am really looking forward to next semester and can't wait to see what..... interesting things I will decide to make. Heres one of the projects that I have been working on this week:

It's another basket made out of clay slurry. This one is the biggest one that I have made so far. I'm just crossing my fingers that it won't break!! I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can bisque fire it. If it makes it through bisque fire then I should be safe.... knock on wood.

So..... that's all for now.

BYE AMY!!!! YOU'RE THE GREATEST <3

Busy as a Bee

Well, winter break is over. Time to head back to school.... and start counting down the days until spring break!!! Today I was cleaning out my cabinet and was surprised to find a concentration project that I had completely forgotten about. WHAT A LOVELY SURPRISE. I was going to photograph it and put it up with this blog but unforntunately it had to go straight into the kiln.... So I will upload a picture of it later. Today I succeeded in making a basket using a plaster mold and the handheld extruder. It turned out pretty well and it looks a little more basket-y than some of the other stuff I've been doing.

Today I also loaded two of my glazed baskets into the kiln. These were the really fragile ones and I'm just crossing my fingers that they survive in the kiln....

So now for the million-dollar question....... WHAT'S NEXT?!
Well just today I sent an email to Marion Pollmann (see 2 blogs down) asking her about some of her techniques. Hopefully she will get back to me by next class because I would love to start trying to create a piece similar to her work. Something like this:

That's all for now. Bye.

daaayyyyuuuummm.....

I'm practicing humiliation by putting this photo up for the world wide web to see.

I know... scary. I don't care. Oh and p.s. this is at the Lake Oswego Deno's Pizza

Marion Pollmann

I was going to post a blog about what I've been working on lately but I'm going to wait until I can get pictures of my stuff. So, for now, I wanted to tell everyone about a new artisit that has inspired me and given me new ideas for my concentration pieces.....

Her name is Marion Pollmann. She was born in Austria but moved to America in 1994. She now lives in Olympia, Washington.

     

She makes a lot of basket forms that I really like. I cant really figure out how she makes some of her pieces (if she extrudes thin coils of clay, rolls the coils, or uses a clay slurry) so I'm planning on contacting her to see what her technique is....

She spends time traveling throughout Europe and in the South Pacific. Her travels influence her work in interesting ways. Her vases are inspired by her earlier life in Europe where, she says, people give much more importance to flowers and vases in their homes. Time in Tahiti brought forth her ceramic baskets and two lines of dishes. I find it inspiring that she travels around the world to get inspiration for her pieces.

This is one of my favorite pieces by her... I really want to figure out how she makes it!!!

Artist Watch: Lanzarin Antonio

Hey bloggers.....
So when I was trying to find artists that did work similar to what I want my concentration to be, I came across a couple of artists that made basket forms. One artist in particular was this guy named Lanzarin Antonio. He makes ceramic baskets, but not in the way I had originally planned on making mine.

He makes his out of coils and strips of slab clay. Looking at his work made me reconsider what I wanted my perameters to be for my concentration. Originally, I was planning on making the baskets strictly out of clay slurry. But now that I'm thinking about what I want to do more, I'm kind of considering making my concentration a more borad genre of "baskets". Let me know what you think!

I Think My Concentration Will Be.........

BASKETS!!!! Baskets made of clay. I started doing these towards the end of last year. They're really fun to make but the problem is that they are SO DELICATE. last year only like 50% of the ones I made actually survived through glazeware. So I would probably have to make a lot of them since half of them will break. I want to experiment more with shape and pattern of the lines and also the shape of the basket itself. I also want to try different clays/glazes (raku?!?). This is going to be very interesting....

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!!

Concentrating......

So over the past week we've had to come up with 25 concentration ideas. The we had to narrow it down to 5 ideas. And then we had to pick 2... all in just a week. In my PERSONAL opinion, I don't think concentrations are a good idea and I really don't like the concept of it. I get that the college board wants to see that we are able to focus on just one theme and create art pieces based on that theme. But, as an artist, I feel like we shouldnt be so limited. Concentrations just stress me out. I like being able to do what I feel like doing. If I were rebellious enough I probably just wouldn't do a concentration. But I'm not a rebel. And I want to submit a portfolio. And get a good score on that portfolio. So I guess I'm going to do a concentration.....

Question O' the Day......

What happens when you trap a group of high school art students in a room full of junk for SIX HOURS?

Why, they make art OF COURSE. duhhhhh. Well, this is what happened to me. On tuesday. In the ceramics room. For six hours. On tuesday. For six hours. In the ceramics room.....

I know it sounds like I'm complaining but it was actually a really rewarding experience and it was really fun. I got my "creative juices" flowing FO SHO.

Diane Lou, our guest artist, was SO helpful and SO nice. She brought a bunch of her own junk, which was really great because I dont think we would have had enough to work with if he hadn't. But this is what I made:

This was the first time I have ever really worked with multimedia (I don't know why) and I really like the result of my project. I dont know what I'm going to call it yet. Also, I feel like it's too simple. My classmates said it doesnt need anything else but I feel like it needs something on the sides. Any suggestions? Or should I just leave it like it is? HELPPPPP

Family

For those of you who don't know, over the summer my dad and I adopetd two little girls who have been living with us for about a year as foster children. They eventually went up for adoption, AND WE ADOPTED THEM!! Having them as part of my family has COMPLETELY changed my life for the better.

So, when we were assigned to do a clay sculpture centered around an aspect of the family, I naturally thought of my two new sisters. What I decided to do for my project was to sculpt four hollow, basic figures. Two will be small and made out of raku clay and the other two are larger and I'm hoping to have them be a darker matte color. Theres nothing very intricate or special about the actual design of the figures but I hope that what will make this project special is the contrast of metallic raku of the smaller figures to the matte glaze of the larger figures. The smaller raku figures represent my new sisters. The sculpture is meant to symbolize that they are a part of my family now (same figure shape) but are very different and have completely changed the loves of both my dad and I. I'm still in the process of making them, but hopefully they will turn out!

While I was sculpting the smaller figures, Amy noted on how my sculptures looked like the work of Katy McFadden, a local sculptor. Here is one of her works, located by Lake Oswego City Hall:

Exploding Fetus.....

I had FINALLY finished my fetus sculpture after hours of work I put into it. It was fired this weekend. I came into the studio on Monday to check on it.... and here is what I found:



The head of the fetus had exploded in half and somewhere in the process the entire head had fallen off of the body alotgether, taking the poor fetus's left arm off with it.

It was a SAD SAD SAD sight. Luckily, I refrained from tears. But words cannot describe how dissapointed I was. And the worst part is that it was all my stupid fault!!!!!!! I thought I had created a hole in the head through the open mouth of the fetus. But apparently, the hole had not gone all the way through. It was SO frustrating.

HOWEVER, this experience did not prove to be an entirely negative one. In one of my first blogs, I stated that, as an artist, you are bound to fail at some point. I would consider "exploding fetus" to be an epic fail on my part. The key in failing is learning to deal with the failure and move on. Life is not perfect. You can't expect everything you do to be 100% successful. So, when you enconter a dissapointment, learn to make the best out of it and see the positive aspects of it.

Luckily, with Amy's help (I LOVE YOU AMY), I am currently in "exploding fetus repair" mode. I managed to glue all the pieces back together. Today, I filled the cracks with wood putty. Tomorrow, I am going to sand down the seams to make them smooth and then cover the fetus with a primer that will hopefully conceal it's flaws. Next week, I'm going to paint the fetus rather than applying underglaze and firing it. PROBLEM SOLVED.

I've now realized that troubleshooting is something I'm going to have to get extremely good at if I want to continue making art......

Shocking Art: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

The fetus, while in the womb, is considered to be one of the most vulnerable and feeble organisms. At the time, it has no control over its destiny, it cannot make choices for itself; it cannot talk, cry, or even move. It is completely dependant on the mother to nourish and protect it.

So what happens if the mother is involved in a car collison, and the baby dies? Is it the mother's fault? Most certainly not. It was not intentional. But neither is sipping a glass of wine during the first few weeks of pregnancy, before the mother even knows she is pregnant. Even worse, some mothers choose to neglect their maternal duties alltogether and consume alcohol on a regular basis during their pregnancy. While one act is intentional and the other is not, they are both damaging to the long-term well-being of the fetus.

In our society, the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy is considered an act of horror. Yet, every year in the United States, over 40,000 babies are born with fetal alcohol effects.

My adopted sister, Cheyenne, was one of those unlucky 40,000 babies whose lives have been changed forever due to the effects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. That's why I chose to have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome be the theme of my "shocking art" piece. This one really hits home for me....

What I did for the project was I sculpted a fetus out of clay, trying to keep it looking as life-like as possible. There are some "deformities" but I think these add to the overall effect and message that this sculpture has. I made the "belly button" larger than normal so I could fit a tube in it and attatch the other end of the tube to a wine bottle. This portrays the umbilical cord literally connecting the baby to the alcohol (which is basically what is happening when the mother consumes alcohol).

Fetal alcohol syndrome is something I feel SO strongly about. It makes me so angry because that one stupid decision made by the mother will effect the child for its whole life. My sister Cheyenne will never be able to have a family of her own. She will never be able to even live by herself.  She will always have to have someone to look after her. She will never be able to drive. She will never have as many friends as she would like. She will never make it past fifth grade math (even though she is currently in 7th grade). It killed her when she realized that even her younger sister is able to pick up on things better than she can. She will NEVER be able to lead a normal life. At first glance, people might mistake her for just being plain stupid. BUT SHE REALLY ISNT. She has the same emotional maturity of any girl her age. She just doesn't have any cognitive abilities. She can't make connections between different concepts. She has a very hard time remembering sequences. She's very forgetful.

And yet, she is one of the sweetest, most loving girls you will ever meet. She LOVES kids and is great with them. There is not a mean bone in her body. I could go on and on about the tragedy of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. But I won't. Words honestly can't describe the feelings I have towards it and the sympathy I have for my sister. There is no cure to this disease. It can only be prevented.

here is a link about fetal alcohol syndrome if you want to learn more:
http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/brain/fas.html

A Little Blurb

OHHHEMGEE CHECK OUT THIS ARTIST!! His name is Ron Mueck... he's from Australia but he now works in the UK. He is described as a "Hyperrealist Sculptor"

Most of his pieces are larger-than-life, although he has sculpted some to-scale and smaller figures. His method consists of sculpting figues out of fiberglass resin and adding details such as hair.

I find his work soooo incredibly intriguing but also pretty disturbing at the same time. He pays close attention to the minor details of the human body, which is what contributes to his sculptures looking to realistic.

*Sneak Peak* This picture inspired me somewhat when working on my "shocking" piece of art... i'll talk about that later in another post (hopefully tomorrow or thursday night):

He has tons of other works, google him to see more! They're AMAZING!!

Confession...

Last Friday, we critiqued one another's summer art projects in class. I was very content with all of my projects... except for one. To me, it seemed to be the ugly blemish in a collection of otherwise beautiful art. The piece I made over the summer which I hated was this collection of four "free-form" wax sculptures I had mounted on a piece of white laminate shelving. Essentialy, what I did was melt different colors of crayon and dump the hot, melted wax into a large bowl of cold water. Immediately, the wax would harden and create these really organic shapes. At first, I really liked the idea and I liked how they turned out. But, when I thought about it more and more, I started to criticize it. It just seemed too... easy. It seemed too abstract.  I was ahamed of it. I dreaded showing it to my classmates and teacher.

So finally it was my turn to present my projects. I presented the wax sculptures first, hoping that my classmates would forget about it by the time I was done presenting my other pieces. To my utter disbelief, my wax sculptures were the single piece that my classmates were most intrugued by.

The moral of the story: NEVER doubt yourself as an artist. Don't let people's feelings and opinions influence your creative intuition. Everyone has their own, unique, ideas of what art is. When you start trying to closely scrutinize your works of art through other people's eyes, you will end up unsatisfied and dissapointed.

One Big, Happy Family....

HELLO fellow bloggers..... THIS IS MY FIRST POST IN THE WORLD OF BLOGGERDOM!! weeeeee. wow. I already sound like a nerd.....

So last weeked I went on an art retreat to Menucha with my AP-3D class. Menucha is this retreat center in the Gorge. It was soooo beautiful there!! The weather was perfect, besides it being a little cold early the first day. Sarah, our guest artist was really talented and really inspired me to venture out of my comfort zone and create pieces made out of clay cylinders we had extruded in class. I feel like in order to improve as an artist, you can't be afraid to try new things and experiment. Will you fail sometimes? Yeah, probably. But you will also gain knowledge and experience that you didn't have before.

The next day we went out and created pieces of art made out of materials found in nature. They were inspired by artist Andy Goldsworthy. The piece I made, pictured here, is made out of this dry, long grass that I wove around a frame made of sticks. For pops of color, I used berries and flowers I found nearby. It took me a good three hours to make this... but I think it was worth it. I think the close-up pictures turned out better so I posted one of those in addition to a zoomed-out picture.

In general, the retreat was wayyy more fun than I expected. I think we really "bonded" as a class. (Yeah, I know, its terribly cliche.) Everyone was really nice and I also think that it was good we had something in common to connect us all... our love of art. We had SOOOO much food. And my favorite part had to be watching "The Last Unicorn". Quality film.

I'm pretty sure this post is getting ridiculously long so I should stop typing now. Seeya next week!.... or maybe sooner.....