One of Many

I love stamps. I have questions. Help.

Sewing Cards

This was a total rush job trying to scan everything I could find for a review...but here are the rest of the cards I sewed for my bookmaking class. The spacing is huge for some reason. Anyway this just means that I need to learn how to make lights so I can backlight all my pieces properly...another project another project...

Lauren Kalman

It's so disgusting but...lovelove. These are some pieces from Lauren Kalman's Hard Wear series. I normally don't like to read what artist's have to say about their work usually because it's some enlightened transcendentalist metaphysical content based thing that I can't connect back to the piece itself but I liked this part of what she had to say about these pieces: 

 "In contrast, I present gold jewelry as a vehicle to amplify taboo aspects of the body. I fabricate gold adornment to highlight where the interior body transgresses its boundaries making organs, imperfections and diseases visible. The form of the adornment often reflects malignant excrescences, such as rupturing membranes or cancerous growths. These gleaming outgrowths cause bodily residues to be shed as they spread orifices and tear skin. When the beauty of gold is alloyed with the seeping body the objects become both intriguing and repulsive."

jellOrifices

I can make anything creepy. I win. Visceral jello anyone? [this is wrong...the colors I mean...it is a deep dark red in iPhoto but then a paleish fleshiness on the web...odd...it doesn't look as good]

Gross

Failure. I don't like the way this project turned out at all. But again I always like my ideas better than the outcome. For my math final we had to do an art project incorporating/studying math in some way [welcome to art school]. Totally uninspired, totally stressed, totally didn't care at all. But then I found little T4 Bacteriophage...they kill E.coli and I thought it was appropriate given that I am sick and I think it's because people do not wash their hands after going to the bathroom and then I get to touch the dirty door handle with my cleansed hands. WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE NOT WASH THEIR HANDS! Anyway these microscopic killers have icosohedral heads so that was my connection to math. Also do not ask me to explain the 4th dimension to you..it and the 11th dimension were invented by those gentlemen who had rulers in hand when absinthe was invented. Anyway knitted a scarf thing and stitched awkward misshapen T4 around it...dumb.

Do You Think I'm Tall Enough?

Here is one of the ladders I mentioned earlier but you will read later. I had a dream about a room full of ladders that bent at the rungs and started to shake and rattle towards me. It was kind of intimidating...so I made a box of pretty ladders instead. Unfortunately photographs do not do them justice because direct sunlight is the only thing that makes them sparkle. The assignment was to make a dream into either a spinning wheel or a box in the time alloted. I only had a glue gun and wire so this is what happened. I was originally worried about the messiness of the glue but everyone really liked the shiny blobs so I made more and now want to make jewelry with hot glue baubles. [there are more ladders inside of a box but I don't have a good enough shot so make do with this lonely ladder]

Draw Your Sensitivity

I wasn't incredibly happy with this project...but I think it's an interesting idea anyway. I have no feeling in the tip of my left pointer finger from an oh so tragic meeting with a drill and a jagged piece of nickel in the jewelry studio last year and I have realized that I am always rubbing it when I'm thinking about a project...why not let other people feel the same way? I miraculously found the exact tube tamponish bandaging they used for my finger at the hospital [after I had waited 6 hours to get a needle dug into the wound to make sure there was no metal in it besides the needle of course...and was in hysterics over the fact that the women next to me had called an ambulance from dennys to pick her up because she was having trouble breathing because she smoked pot...and her last name was butts...also first time hospital lessons: head wounds should be treated immediately or they tend to fall over with only me to notice them sprawled out in the corner...so rub their sternum with your knuckles to wake them up...blue painters tape holds your severed fingers on your hand...just say that you have trouble breathing and you will be seen to immediately...save your vicodin] ok giant sidenote aside I found a huge roll of the tube bandage [which apparently can fit a small childs head as well?] and made tiny finger puppets and put needles in the pads or overpadded them. The more needles the less it hurts but people were intimidated anyway...I later added a book of transfer paper for people to draw with the finger tubes. I also punched some things in braille in the acetate but I can't remember what they say anymore. The bandaid box was a perfect fit...but I still dont like it.

Rapunzel Rapunzel

Hair pills? Yes, please. For my bookmaking final I decided to make it easier for people with trichophagia [mental illness where you pluck out your hair-which is called trichotillomania and eat it]. Rapunzel syndrome is when the hair collects in your stomach and felts together [because hair is too smooth to be digested]. I thought it was funny. I do need a drill though because hot glue just isn't cutting it anymore, though it worked for the ladder project [which inspired this structure]. I have been challenged by my classmates and Nance [I don't think I've mentioned her name yet for some reason...Nance O'banion...I want to make her my crazy fun wand waving great aunt who secretly hands me things like boxes and paper] to create either a diptych or triptych of boxes to reference each stage of the disease [with definitions please] because they didn't know of the disease in the first place and didn't get the reference. I just thought all weird strange illnesses were common knowledge...nope.

Teeth Tunnel

We were working a lot with dreams for one class of bookmaking and the tunnel book was the structure we learned for the class and I.was.so.pissed. It was so difficult for me to figure out the flap structure and I felt really dumb so I came back and proved that I could do it. This was a dream that I had awhile ago that the roof of my mouth was all leprosied and a stringy spongy mass and my teeth were starting to drip out of my mouth and I couldn't keep them inside...so why not make a book out of it!? This was obviously nothing compared to everyone else's use of the tunnel book...they were amazing.

Lost and Found [Typographical Accordion]

This was the first big project I did at the beginning of the semester for my bookmaking class. I cut a letterpress tray into thirds and hinged it so that it slides together like an accordion book. I would like to continue working on it and would also like to take better pictures of the cells now that I have set up my makeshift photo studio but I probably won't...you will never get to see the bee halves or the mold in the test tube or the word game or the pretty plastic horses and you will also never know exactly how long it took me to figure out how to spell accordion...

PIG 05049

Christien Meindertsma did this amazing project that I believe took over three years to complete. She followed all the products made from one single pig [PIG 05049]. Every little piece of that little piggy was used for something, most things you would expect and a lot more that you wouldn't. For example: ammunition, brakes, gum, photo paper, porcelain, paint... The exhibit of PIG 05049 looked incredibly interesting. Meindertsma packaged each thing as you would see meat packaged in a grocery store and placed everything in the freezer set up. A wonderfully detailed beautiful looking book was created as a catalogue for each product from PIG 05049. [I found this project relevant because of using pig gut in textiles]

Re-Revised Artist Statement and Rational

I

AM

MAGIC.

Alchemy

I make baskets. Big Baskets. This project ['the container and the contained'] was for my fiber sculpture class. I didn't have much of a concept or idea while I was working I was just in 'coilingcoilingcoilingcoiling' phase. It didn't turn out the way I wanted it to though there was going to be a lot more elements involved on the outside but I think the simplicity/complicatedness of the piece is a lot better than what I had been planning. It is almost a foot tall and it should have been bigger but I fell asleep in an awkward wake-up-sprawled-on-the-floor-with-needles-in-your-shirt-and-yarn-in-your-mouth-wishing-that-you-had-a-rager-party-but-instead-had-just-spent-the-last-8-hours-coiling... kind of way. Jute rope coiled with white yarn and layers of netted brass wire nestled into the basket. It looks better when you stick your face in it and hold it up to the light although you look like a complete idiot... it's pretty.

For You and Yours

This was for my fiber sculpture class for a project on memories. I decided to work with memories I never had; I never knew my mother's mother or my father's father. So I asked my parents to share some memories of their parents with me because I know nothing of my family's history. I chose my father's memory of his father reading hardbacked books from the library on the beach, smoking non filtered Camel cigarettes. And I also chose my mother's memory of her mother sewing and taking her out of school to go shopping for fabric. The needle is crocheted with 32 gauge silver plated copper wire and the cigarette is crocheted from thick white thread and dark brown hand dyed yarn. Both pieces are to scale of the objects they are imitating. I am hoping to finish a box I started on to keep these pieces together. It will be in the style of a match box but longer and made from layered sewing pattern paper. The top will be embroidered with a cellophane camel from the Camel brand label. I am happy with the way these turned out; both are a bit wonky but I am not that experienced with crochet and especially working with a size 11 hook [tiny!] it was difficult to try and make it exact. Soft sculpture isn't an exact art...it's always a bit lopsided.

Illuminated Encryptions

I really enjoyed the hours and hours of making this book [no sarcasm; art school has sucked it all out of me]. The words were made by single letter stamps and I filled about 100 pages full of nonsense automatic writing I did last year in my English class. I then Xerox transferred some creepy images of children throughout the coptic book. The paper is some kind of legal document paper and it is super thin and has a great crinkly sound while you flip through the book even though the pages are really soft. I have an obsession with all things shiny at the moment so textured gold paper? Yes, please.

WindBlown

I make baskets. This was one that I started last year and just finished while spending 16 hours cooking kozo [a plant fiber for papermaking]. It is twined out of 26 gauge silver plated copper wire. I still haven't figured out how to finish it off especially now that Longs is not Longs and therefore does not carry 26 gauge silver plated copper wire.

I am an Asshole

The first paragraph is my artist statement the second is my rational for wanting to become an Individualized Major. I win.

Artists have become advocates, pioneers, crusaders, defenders, and saviors. I am not an ‘artist’. Art has become everything. I do not make ‘art’. I am simply and selfishly my thoughts and my hands. I create for myself; to challenge my mind, my ability, my sanity, my body. I have no intention other than to make things for the sake of the instinctual process of combining. There is no reason or meaning, concepts are fleeting, and the end result just begins a new cycle of ‘what could have been’ or ‘what will be’. I read, I research, I observe, I discover, I experiment, I think, I play, I fuck up, I learn. I fashion allusions, wit, and intellect into conundrums. I recontextualize and juxtapose contradictions. I materialize irony and duality into ambiguous narratives. I create tension between the materials, the viewer and the piece, between connotations already associated with the objects used, and the precarious situations I place them in. I am an alchemist. But my reward is not the gold or immortality; it is the act of transforming.

I am here to learn and to challenge myself. I want to enjoy my work; to create for the sake of creating. I am here for me and these are my terms. I believe that to understand something, one has to go beyond the given and the norm. Therefore, to work within sculpture, I must transcend sculpture. I must branch out and learn all types of medium in order to become well rounded in the art of creating. There is one absolute truth that I know of my future: that I will not be satisfied with one set path of study. I want to study the art of combining mediums, methods, materials, thought processes, ideas. I want film, robotics, glass, plastic, metal, holography, chemistry, textiles, bookmaking, printmaking, photography, found objects, research, history, literature, nature, sound, smell, taste, touch, wisdom, sarcasm, intellect, humor, wit, duality, conundrums. I say ‘I want’ but it is a need; a need to create with my hands, a need to challenge my ability, a need to exercise my mind. My goal is ambitious: to create a major of an encyclopedic nature, but the standards I set for myself are high and I will not accept anything below the expectations I have for myself and my work. I have thrown down the gauntlet and I have accepted the challenge.

Illuminations

I have been wandering around the CCA library just looking at all the titles. It is seriously a magical place with lots of hidden books on the bottom shelves. I found a whole section on illuminated manuscripts awhile ago...soooo pretty. I still don't understand how they made them but that's because I haven't researched them. Anyway so I was scanning them and for some reason they all came out with this yellowish glow from the light of the scanner? I liked it so I didn't mess around with it in Photoshop. I can't remember anymore but I think the collection is called Hours of Mary or something along those lines. It surprisingly has a lot more unicorns than can be expected in a religious manuscript.

Water Drawings

seaweed and psychedelic drip

is it the ink or the squid? and microscopic

eggplant and honey

This was something I started over the summer...trying to fill a watercolor moleskine with horrible muddy watercolors and then picking out the individual colors with a sharpie. I have a lot more but these are the only ones I feel like scanning today.