I thought I had posted this but I guess I didn't. This was for my individualized class where we were supposed to recreate and/or improve a failed piece. The most horrible piece ever [first picture] was a piece I did for my sculpture class freshman year where we had to make an abstract human emotion or gesture appear to not be human, but still convey the emotion, and enlarge it to human size, out of wood. yeah. I was so confused...still am. so I made this horrible thing out of millions of wooden skewers that was at first supposed to represent an awkward hug from a taller person [installation not shown] but when we were required to move the pieces down to a show case, I placed it on a pedestal that when touched would rock back and forth which I liked better so then I renamed it 'beckoning'. The whole point of the piece for me was to make it seem as though it wasn't made out of wood. to make it appear either in motion or soft [which didn't work as planned]. that was my only goal.
so for the new piece I decided to follow that train of thought, but in reverse. I wanted to make something that looked like wood. so I decided to knit and embroider wood panels. of course this piece didn't work out as I had planned either [I was planning on making this crazy interactive game where you built something with the planks] but the wool I had chosen [for it's sheen that to me, resembled hardwood flooring] was too expensive for such a grand idea. so instead I made a tree trunk like collar/cowl/scarf thing which is so chubby and soft and warm. it was made out of 3 skeins of merino wool which created 14 different sized planks of 40, 60, 80, and 100 stitches that I then stitched together to create a double wall effect. I think I could have done better with the wood grain but you know how time doesn't exist and all so this idea is something I would like to continue. Both are failed projects to me so maybe the third time is the charm!
I'm actually really proud of these; though they aren't perfect [I can't do perfect. Obsessive, yes but perfect , never] This is the first time ever I have sketched an idea and it has come out exactly like I wanted it to. It was funny because I told my teacher he wasn't allowed to talk to me about my project [he really loves helping figure out problems and talk us through why we're doing what we're doing which is super exciting to have such a responsive and thoughtful teacher but at the same time it makes me almost always regret or rethink what I'm planning to almost disastrous ends] and he complied with my wishes though I could see it was a struggle for him not to discuss it with me. I also didn't tell anyone else what I was doing and it really helped not talking about it, just going ahead and doing it. If they asked I just screamed something like 'puppets' or something so then we nicknamed me the puppet master. And in the end that's how they turned out; toylike. I began with 100s of old postcards I found from this woman who traveled all over the place and wrote on these cards as if they were a diary or something. It was kind of sad because they were never sent to people. So I decided to bring the postcards together in a communicative way I guess...The people are from Israel and Italy, the hotels from Amsterdam, the long building from Sweden, the cars from Norway, and the mountains from Austria. I have many more cutouts from all the places she traveled and would like to continue making these interchangeable landscape rings. I think they're fun and it's a new way to do what used to do all the time, collage images, but in a wearable way. I'd like to work with silver or something though...nickel is such a bitch to work with: most jewelers despise and disown it because it's so brittle and hard and stupid and super poisonous. For some reason it's the only metal I work with. I guess I like killing myself faster than I thought.
