Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Monday, December 10, 2012

New Skill & White Elephant Project

Directions:
1. Have someone you know teach you a new skill
2. Use this skill to make a white elephant present for the class

My new skill & present:
     For a new skill to learn I decided to ask my good friend, Anna, to teach me how to knit. My mom likes knitting so I already had the materials I needed and just needed to learn how to actually do it. Anna began by demonstrating herself how to start a scarf and how to start transferring over stitches to create a row. At first my hands felt really clumsy and I felt awkward trying to move the needles, yarn and stitch all at the same time. After about 20 minutes I felt fairly comfortable doing it on my own and Anna didn't need to watch next to me anymore. I knitted for hours the first night and felt like I wasn't making hardly any progress. That's when I realized we probably started off with way too many stitches in the first row for a beginner scarf. I decided to end the piece early and sew the two ends together to create an infinity scarf, but realized the end stitches were about one third longer than the beginning. It looked okay, but I wanted to make something better for the gift giving.
     My next project was a lot easier to manage. I started to make a winter ear warmer and had it finished in about 4 hours over two days. It looked a lot nicer than the first attempt. I liked the idea of an ear warmer because they're kind of goofy looking so it worked with the white elephant, but they're also very practical at this time of year. At the actual gift giving a boy received my teal ear warmer and I received a nice crochet hat.





 
     I really liked doing this project because I get excited when I get to give people gifts, especially ones I have spent time making. I do agree that as an artist I have some sense of responsibility to share my skills and talent with everyone by either producing art for others to see, have, or learn to do themselves. I think this was a perfect way to end the quarter with everyone. It was really impressive what people ended up making.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Art Intervention Project

Intervention: To disrupt the usual

Directions:
1. Go back into the area you mapped
2. Find a pattern to disrupt

My Intervention:
For my intervention I wanted to focus on the way people move through the space without interacting with each other or really expressing emotion on their face. To disrupt this pattern I brought my friend and her puppy, Kingsley, with me to the fountain to brighten people's days. At first we sat on a bench and allowed people to interact with Kingsley freely and observed many people smiling as they passed by and saw the puppy. Then we moved to the edge of the fountain and began asking people passing by if they would take a picture of us until we did a 360 around the fountain and had 8 significant backgrounds.














Everyone was more than happy to take a picture of us in front of the fountain and most people took two or more to make sure there was a good shot. I started the project by only asking people who came up to pet Kingsley, but after the crowd died down a little I had to reach out to people who weren't necessarily interested in the puppy. Some of the reactions I had with Kingsley at the fountain were:

.Interest in what kind of dog Kingsley is
.Desire to share information about their own dogs
.Tempted to be late to class in order to pet Kingsley longer
.Jumping out of the way out of fear of Kingsley
.Grateful for being able to pet him
.Overhearing that people thought he was cute, but who never came to pet him
.Noticing people with big smiles as they approached us and walked by


Monday, November 19, 2012

Mapping Project

Directions:
1. Everyone in the class was given a map of a specific section of campus
2. We were given instructions to go to this area and do three things:
     -Research the area (go to location and explore it)
     -Find a pattern
     -Find a creative way to map this pattern

My Project:
     My location on campus was Drumheller Fountain and the buildings surrounding it including Guggenheim, Bagley, Electrical Engineering, Johnson, and Mary Gates Hall. I arrived to do my research during a passing period and observed the mass amount of people that walk through this area in between classes. I tried to find patterns among the people who passed me, but found it more interesting how some pathways through this location are very heavily used compared to others. This is where I got the inspiration to map the foot traffic that goes through this area during passing period. I also decided to include the duck and geese i saw in the fountain because the two birds seemed to keep separate in two different groups and traveled around together.
     The map itself had to be 48x30" in the media of our choice. I used acrylic paint on cardboard and collage to create my piece. The style I used for the painting was inspired by Australian aboriginal art.






Key:
.Purple and Yellow feet - students
.Black feet - People who are not students/tour group
.Blue circle - Fountain
.Black and white concentric shapes - buildings
.Red and green concentric shapes - vegetation (lawns, flowers, and trees)
.Black and orange bird feet - Geese and ducks in the fountain

     During class, everyone brought their maps and laid them down to create the greater map of UW. I really liked seeing how individual each map was and how everyone had a completely different idea of how to depict their area.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Communities Project: Conclusion

The IVA event party was on November 5th and it was a good turnout. During the afternoon Silverio and I worked on hanging the art on the walls with nails, pushpins, and binder clips. We had about ten artists, including me, Silverio, and Sonny contribute work for the show. After class everyone helped move tables out and set up the sculpture stands, food table, and music table. The screen printing station was really popular and fun to watch as well as Rachel's project with the chalkboard.

Pictures from the event: