Critique day has arrived! Its not where I wanted it to be, but I'm really glad its at least completely covered and study enough to be propped up. I still plan on setting it in a cube base, and spray painting it a rusty brown red color, but thats just going to have to wait until after the critique tomorrow. Surprisingly, I'm not sick of this piece yet! Every stage of the process has been so different, from the newspaper shape to the wire mesh to the faux plaster that I feel like I've approached the feeling of "I'm done with this" with each part, but never actually reached it. I'm really excited to add the color, I think it will make it seem like a much more complete piece.
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Last month we visited the Try Me Gallery, which is a restoration process/private collection of piece. The collection is held up to museum like standards; with a standard 45 degree temperature, constant humidity, and light filteration devices. Since it is a private collection, unlike other galleries we have visited, this one wasn't open to the public; we had to get special permission and were lead by the registerer of the collection. During the visit, we jumped from topic to topic as we went around and discussed each piece. The weirdest thing about the gallery was that none of the pieces had placards up with their titles and artists, so for every piece we had to either ask, or just take a picture and look for it on the website later. Overall, I had a really great time at the gallery. It was really interesting to see all kinds of pieces in one space, not categorized by style or medium or year. Walking around, I noticed how different pieces were mounted and displayed- some on pedestals, others flush against the wall, and some taking up space in an installation kind of way. I think seeing the size of the pieces are what inspired me to go big with my sculpture. My favorite piece was this large, kind of ugly thing that looked like a mismatched fluffy comforter tacked to the wall. It seemed far too heavy to be pinned up to the wall, and I was intrigued by how it managed to hold its own weight. This is what inspired me to create a larger piece that regardless of its size, still stood up in an interesting way. Its yet to be seen if I actually achieve this but fingers crossed!
Last weekend I kept on working on coating my piece with the fake concrete material. Since the top side was dried, I was able to turn the piece over on its side and cover the inside of curves. Surprisingly, the thick layers I had used earlier prevented it from cracking. Since the sculpture is due Friday, my very first goal is to have the piece completely covered. Then, if possible I want it to hopefully be standing up, which means creating a mold for the base and finding a way to make the base heavier so it will be evenly weighted. Lastly, my final and most unreasonable goal is to finish all that AND spray paint the piece a rusty brown color.
Since in class we have officially begun our oil painting unit, we haven't had as much time to work on our sculptures. But, it's still coming along slowly! I've begun working on coating the wire mesh frame with the hardening concrete like mix, which takes longer than I expected since the cylinder like shape of the tubes makes it so I can only coat one side of the piece at a time. I noticed that when dry, the material isn't as strong as a expected and can crumble easily if mishandled, so I think its going to take possibly a few coats of the material to make sure it stays solid (also to make sure the parts that I coat at separate times stick together). Overall, its going pretty well and the next step is to figure out how to get it to stand up, but I can only really do that after I see how heavy the whole thing is after this part of the process.
I was so sad to miss this final Lunchtime Lecture of the year! After learning about Mr. Freyer, I am very interested in the way he "creates art". I put that in italics since it is debatable whether he creates art or not, and I'm not sure what my opinion of the answer is quite yet. He calls himself a "recovering conceptual artist", which confuses me since I would still consider him a conceptual artist- I'm not sure what other category his art would fall under. It almost seems to me like he's not an artist at all; instead, he's taken a step back from being an artist and is now some kind of keeper of art, questioning what is allowed in and what isn't. While he asks big questions about what art is, I appreciates how he makes his projects more digestible by naming them plainly, like "Free Ice Water" and "All My Life for Sale". I understand that in his work he manifests meaning into ordinary objects by enriching them with conversation and consequently with meaning, but I wonder if he would consider them art if the viewers did not know the history behind the piece. Essentially, my question is asking if its enough to have faith that their must be some history behind the object, or is knowledge of the project essential. For example, from his Free Hot Supper project, would the project's meaning and content be sufficiently expressed if a viewer just saw different types of chairs surrounding a dinner table, or from his Free Ice Water project, would it be enough for the viewer to simply see the empty jar with the trinkets inside of it, not knowing that they were donated at the end of a conversation? I think this is kind of a "If nobody heard the tree fall, did it really fall" kind of question, but it made me think. I think at the end of the day I would consider his projects art, because even though I'm not involved in the process of enriching the objects with meaning, they still stimulate my mind and in a way force me to have a conversation with myself. Personally, I can't see myself creating any art of this type in the future, but I would love to take part in projects like these as a participant; it seems like a great way to gain a deeper understanding of the piece's message and also to just interact with the art community. |
Ria BakshiCheck out what I'm currently working on by clicking the PROCESS button! Archives
December 2020
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