3d to 2d forms

Paper Stacking

In the third week of May I went to Cape Cod with my three best friends. I had a terrible time. I had such a terrible time in fact I lost one of my closest friends, we had always had a turbulent relationship but I realized it is difficult enough for me to keep up relationships with family and friends who are living in Pennsylvania that is is not worth keeping someone around who is just making life more difficult. We always had fun together but she can be overbearing and cause me a lot of anxiety. 

After I got back I was working on my paper stacking and I had not yet started my abstract form, I was listening to music when Sober by Kelly Clarkson came on. The version that came on is live and in the beginning she talks about a line that she based the song around which was "Pick the weeds and keep the flowers" as she is describing that she also says "You have to pick the people out of your life that are cancers for you and keep the good ones"

I decided two things in that moment, 1. that I did need to keep this person out of my life because she just isn't worth keeping around and 2. I would base my abstract form on this idea and make it similar to the shape of a cancer cell or weeds.

 Cancer cell on a scanning electron microscope.

Poetic Metamorphosis

This was by far my least favorite assignment. 

After reading the metamorphosis I decided it reminded me of my brother. Growing up he was always a trouble maker, by the end of high school he spent all of his time in his room and didn't really come out ever, he was extremely depressed and while he has recovered and is perfectly fine now I still think of him in that way.

If anyone were to turn into a bug it would be him. And he did, metaphorically speaking. The story of the metamorphosis which tells us of a person who transforms into a bug is really a metaphor, the name refers both to a metamorphosis into a bug and to the fact that this story is actually a metaphor. Kafka is actually speaking about a person who changes into something else, perhaps due to alcoholism, depression, disease or a whole host of other things which can severely change a persons life. 

When I made the bed I chose the colors based on the colors in my brothers room. His room is almost entirely blue but I added the orange and purple to represent the love of my family and how much we helped him through such a difficult time. 

My younger sisters favorite color is purple, she and my brother are extremely close, she was a great help to him and will always be a huge influence and help in his life. My older sister and I love orange and orange was the color of the walls in my living room when we first moved into our house, the living room is a place where the whole family gets together and it is certainly filled with love and happiness.

When I made the bug I wanted it to be green because my brothers favorite stuffed animal was green. I decided green is also a color associated with bugs. Since in the story the bug was never described in great detail I decided to make the bug look like what i think of as a generic bug, the image that comes to my mind when I hear the word bug, a very nondescript 6 legged small green bug.

Momento

For this assignment I decided I would make a momento based on a house my family goes to every summer. The house is in the Pocono Mountains and it is a hunting and fishing club. The house itself is huge, it can sleep 30 people and is there for fishermen to get away for a weekend, meals are prepared on the premises, there is a boathouse on the private lake as well as three shooting ranges and plenty of land for hunting, hiking and biking. The house is in Marshalls Creek, Pa, a small town, the house itself is 13 miles from the center of town, a very quiet, peaceful getaway.

The club is called Beaver Run, my grandfather and uncle as well as a few of my second cousins are members of the club (its very old fashioned, women are not allowed to be members). When making my momento I thought about two different emotions that go in to the family reunion in the mountains, first theres the peaceful tranquil setting, second is the anxiety that goes in to getting 25 people to agree on a weekend for our visit. Not only do we all need to agree on a weekend, we also need to figure out ahead of time exactly when everyone is coming and leaving (we are charged per meal) and we are all spread out between Pennsylvania, Maine, New Jersey, Florida, California, Arizona and Colorado, my uncle is in charge of planning and he has probably taken ten years off of his life because it is so frustrating.

Thats me in the back, with blonde hair!, that was a few years ago.

I decided to use cotton to represent the relaxation and peaceful atmosphere, and then I tied a ribbon around it to represent the love that keeps my family together and that keeps us planning and going every year despite that fact that its a hassle, to represent the difficulty we have planning it and the anxiety I added pins sticking out of the ribbon however it was STRONGLY suggested that I remove the pins and instead have the ribbon unraveling and fraying at the end. 

Sound confessions

For this piece I decided to use my friends confession. Her confession is "I can't do this anymore." This refers to many things, she can't drink anymore because she stopped drinking alcohol, she quit her job because it became too much for her, and she moved out of her house because her older married sister Carrie and Carries daughter Rachel moved in with her and her Mom after Carries marriage fell apart and caused a lot of trouble around the house. My friends confession refers to huge changed she has made in her life in the past few months.

I decided to use these really cool old pictures I found at my grandmas house to represent the past, bottle caps to represent drinking and a heart shaped pan to represent the love and support my friends family has given her as she goes through all these changes. Happily, she has recently been accepted to grad school and will be studying Occupational Therapy. 

Masked identity

I had a hard time deciding what my identity is. I don't think of myself as a person who fits a certain mold, I am an artist though I don't feel a need to dress eccentrically, I am an athlete, though again I don't really make that apparent through my appearance, I am also a singer, a Philadelphian and an avid movie watcher.  While thinking of ideas for my mask I was sitting in my room which right now looks like it was hit by some sort of explosive device, eventually my boyfriend came over to pick me up, it took me about 4 times longer than necessary, not because I was putting on make up or doing my hair, because I couldn't find any of my stuff. I thought about my Mom being constatnly annoyed by me being a complete mess and leaving my stuff everywhere. The bottom of my backpack is covered in scraps of paper, loose change and melted m&ms, I am a complete mess. 

I decided to make my mask something that makes a mess, like a volcano.

My mask in process. 

Final Solution

It's about time.

Oh no! Holly the elephant fell down and hurt herself! 

Subtractive: Broke off trunk and foot

She decided she needed to be more careful so she started to put on some protective clothes.

Additive: Tied a piece of yarn around elephant.

 She needed some knee and elbow pads.

Additive: Stuck pieces of paper to it.

 After getting ready she went outside to play. Holly got really dirty!

Additive: Rubbed it in dirt. 

She went inside and took a bath. 

Subtractive: Soaked in water

 Holly scrubbed and scrubbed until she was clean.

Subtractive: Scrubbed.

After her bath she dried herself off, but she still wasn't dry enough....

 Subtractive: Toweled dry.

 So she used a blow dryer to dry herself off.

Additive: Put in oven. 

 She dried some more....

 and more....

 until she was ll dry and clean!

Now, after a long day Holly is ready for bed. 

Expressive 3-d forms

For this project we had to used balsa wood, tape and glue to create 4 sculptures to represent 4 words we chose from a list. I chose the words hope, chaotic, calm and angry.

The first sculpture I made was Calm. I created a small box out of tape and then filled it with glue. By creating a horizontal line and making my sculpture so low to the ground I created a calming feeling. I wanted the structure to look like a reflecting pool that would appear near a large monument like the one at the Lincoln Memorial or the Taj Mahal, after creating this sculpture I connected the idea of the reflecting pool and the calming feeling pools give me. I have been a swimmer for the last eight years and have spent so much time in pools, being at a pool feels like home for me whether I'm swimming in it, laying next to it or diligently watching over the people swimming while I'm lifeguarding.

The second sculpture I made was Anger. For this one I used three pieces of balsa wood. The first piece was the base and I used another piece that I stuck out of the base the top of which I broke off rather than cut to create a jagged edge to represent anger and to further the representation of anger I made a small piece of wood which I stuck straight out of the second piece which represents violence which can result from anger.

The third sculpture I made was chaos. I decided to use the chaos that most of the students felt when attempting to assemble this project as my inspiration. I took all the materials we were allowed to use for this project and arranged them in the most chaotic way possible. The tape I arranged in little balls, the wood I broke into pieces which I stuck out of the tape, I took the two balls of tape and attached them using the wood and then I dripped glue over the whole thing.

The last sculpture I made was danger. With this one I had a much different approach than the other three. The first three sculptures I had a plan and a clear direction but this last one I had no idea of what I was going to do. I did however know that I liked the little pieces of wood that came off when I scraped my exacto against the edge, so I did that for about a half hour then decided to attach them to a little rectangle of wood. After that I was trying to decide which word it best represented when I looked at my work at eye level rather than look down at it and I realized it looked just like the forest in the beginning of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves so I attached wood to the bottom to raise up my work so everyone would see it from that perspective and I chose danger as my word.