Wearable art

After Bryant Holsenbeck

I was really impressed with how well she could use found and recycled materials around her. I am also in Art History so I was able to spend more time with her than others in my class and she was always helpful and gave me many suggestions. I made a grown otter and this was hard because I had trouble keeping it proportional; I would have the otters head and body right, but then the feet were too small.  I was able to fix the small feet by adding more wire to them, making them longer. I liked how the different used fabrics gave certain parts of the otter different textures and shades of browns. My otter was also close to the size of a real otter which made it even better. 

Vessels

HI made a bird cage,  it is supposed to represent how people are living in their own world and staying where they feel comfortable. Through the simplicity of the wire I am showing the un-orginal and simple thoughts that some teens are comming up with in their work now.  This project represent me in how I am able to make something so simple and give it a bigger meaning.
I used wire which is a new media for me, I've never used it before and in some parts it was harder to use than I expected, the wire wouldn't always bend the way I wanted it to and I would hurt myself sometimes. I had to experiment with different ways to make a bird with wire which was harder than I originally going to make a solid bird but after having too many problems with it u made an outline of a bird.
To over come my dilema of making a bird, the way I overcame it was by looking up different ways to make a bird. I started by trying to make a solid head but the head was too big and not shaped right. Next I looked up how to make the outline of a bird and went with that.

Before Bryant Holsenbeck

Bryant Holsenbeck is an artist who has made many sculptures out of recycled materials. I have seen some of her work and I'm very impressed with what she has done and I expect meeting her to be very enjoyable. I think that the project will be hard at first but with her help I will be able to do a good job. I would like to make a baby otter because they are small and really cute. This is my favorite thing that she has made:

Book carving

For my book carving I wanted to go more along the lines of something creep; I had one main theme that I started to go with which was "fear" I went around asking everyone what they were scared of and looked up different fobias.  The two that I sketched out were the "seven deadly sins" as monsters comming after a child, which I wasn't a fan of.  The other sketch I did was from an idea I had received from Michelle with two people in the woods and one of them had their head chopped off.  Once I decided that it was creepy enough I started to label the different parts of my picture so I knew what to carve out when. This planning was so important because I had to make sure there was nothing too small or hard to cut out. One piece that was harder for me was carving out a hanging man in the background, the rope ended up being too skinny and he fell out of the book which was frustrating for me because then it became "less creepy". I decided to make the book creepier I would cut the background out and make each layer get smaller and smaller making it look almost like a maze adding an unsettling theme.  With my design I wanted the book on the back cover and some of the back pages to look like they had been sitting in a puddle of blood,  and inside the book I painted the uncarved pages black,  and on one page I painted my fingers red and grabbed the book to look like a bloody hand grabbed it.  The "blood"  I felt was crucial to the overall design because it made the book,  and what is inside, even scarier. In the inside pages I carved and dark figure and a girl in the front center with trees all around them, giving an uneasy feel. I took risks with the background since it doesn't go with the "traditional" forrest with more trees; it's black and gray with the cut out getting smaller as you go back. Another thing that I added to my book was in the back cover I carved "lose your mind" not something a person would see just looking at the original work. Overall I felt this project was quite successful the colors all had a slight gray painted over them giving the whole atmosphere a creepier feel,  all in all I am very pleased with the outcome.

(pictures will be added Thursday I will not be around the book until then)

Mixed media

To show amusement in this project I found pictures of beautiful women from magazines for my background giving it a modern feel. For the center of my peice of my work I used the face of a barbie doll and burned half of it to show what society sees as beautiful and what this "beauty" is making people do to themselves. The mixed media for me was fun I was able to use different materials that I wouldn't normally use in a project like the barbie and fire. The part that ties the whole peice together is the 3D face, her hair makes all the pictures come together pulling your eyes to her face. I learned that collages aren't just pictures glued together they have to work together and make sense. I had challenges trying to decide what the face in the middle should be, first I thought I'd paint it but I found that didn't look as realistic as I wanted so I thought of printing a picture off but that's wouldn't give a different effect from the other pictures so I decided I would use a doll face, which worked out well and gave me the look that I wanted.

Auntpurple

I chose a portrait of my Aunt Sandra because she is very special to me.  We have always been close for as long as I can remember and I love spending time with her. I thought of a few different materials to use for this like, makeup, glass, and leaves,  but the idea that I like the best was melted crayons. The crayons were harder to use that I first thought they would be,  but they added a great texture to the peice that I couldn't have done with other materials. Some things I did to make this portrait more untraditional was using more cool colors like blue and different purples,  another thing that made this different from other was I didn't put her facial features in the portrait,  I made her so you could see where she was like the original picture,  but without a face.  I felt that no fave would leave my peice open for interpretation. One challenge i faced was the wax,  when I first started using it I was melting it in a spoon and the texture was very rough making the look awkward,  but I was able to overcome this by using a wood burner to smooth everything out.  When I decided to use the wood burner to smooth it out it gave the piece a more human feel,  but leaving out the facial features gave it almost a lost feeling making you wonder why I left it out,  it makes you wonder if she was happy,  sad,  scared, or mad,  leaving it more open to think what you want about her. The materials I chose didn't have any connection to my aunt, but I incorporated some of her favorite colors in the piece.