Final: 3D Planes Cardboard Project “Boundary”

Brainstorming for this project proved to be extremely difficult for me. I felt constrained and unimaginative, creating simple 3D geometric shapes. I tried to think “out of the box” (no pun intended) but I ended up with a bunch of cubes. I decided instead of forcing myself to think of something totally new, I would just roll with what I had and try to make a cube as interesting as possible. Soon the idea hatched to make a cube inside a cube seeming to float in mid-air. So I sketched a plan and went to work.

I wasn’t prepared for the amount of math I had set myself up for. Because I was making each edge of the square its own 3 dimensional rectangle, I had to make some edges shorter than others. After measuring and counting how many sizes of each side I would need for each square, I got to cutting.

Even after checking and rechecking my math, I still managed to write down the wrong number. Instead of making eight 36” boxes to fit with the four 48” boxes to create the big outer box, I accidently made eight 24” boxes. This resulted in a rectangle shape instead of the perfect cube I was going for. Instead of throwing the eight boxes out, I decided to just reduce the 48” boxes down to 36” so the 24” boxes would be the right size to complete the cube.

The next problem I faced was the paper tape I had bought. It was strong enough to bind the smaller box rectangles together, but it was not binding the individual rectangles together to create the entire box. I ended up using almost an entire roll of masking tape to support the box, then covered it in paper tape. Because I am spray painting it black, I will need to cover every edge and open area with tape.

For my last few steps, I need to cover both cubes with the spray paint as well as hang the smaller cube within the bigger cube using clear fishing line I bought.

My original idea was to hang this entire piece from the ceiling to give the whole thing a really weightless feel to go along with the floating cube on the inside, but my plan B is to find a nice, elevated spot outside where  people can get a good view of the floating cube inside of it.

 

My piece is titled Boundaries. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, boundary is defined by the following:

bound·ary

noun \ˈbau̇n-d(ə-)rē\

: something (such as a river, a fence, or an imaginary line) that shows where an area ends and another area begins

: a point or limit that indicates where two things become different

boundaries : unofficial rules about what should not be done : limits that define acceptable behavior

I feel this piece applies to the definitions above because of the material and context within the design. Boundaries have a lot to do with area, as does planes and the use of flat cardboard. Cubes have a very defiant area, but is confused in this piece because of the inner cube. Is this piece all one cube with implied lines, or are they separate cubes? “Unofficial rules about what should and should not be done” can be applied to the concept of physics within the boundaries of the piece. It is not normal or typical behavior for something to appear to defy gravity, therefore it exceeds the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

“Boundaries”

Ceramics: Final Stage

 

Before going to class on the first day of our ceramics project, I had read an article about elephants and how they can mourn and comfort each other during a death. This stuck to me because of how many people I have lost in the past few years and how I still feel lost on how to mourn and get over the loss. I have lost my grandpa, my first dog, my good friend, and other relatives all within the past two years. When I look at this elephant, I will not think of just them but know that one day I will look back on their memory and not be sad anymore. I want to learn from the grieving process of the elephants and remember that it is all a part of life.

Though I ended up going through multiple elephants until achieving this final piece, I am happy with my results. I worked very hard on getting the realistic skeletal structure of the elephant’s face to come through as well as the wrinkles and the natural flow of the ears. After making the first one, it was got easier and easier to remake them. I chose to stain my piece with wood polish, and then smudge white acrylic paint over the tusks for a worn, ivory look.

 

As for my vessel, this one came to me as I was creating it. I originally made the tree trunk to be a container for the elephant to sit on, but decided I would keep the elephant a separate piece and go a different route. I then began to build a nest, not sure what I was going to put inside. After layering bits of clay to form the nest, I then debated about whether or not I should put a bird or a few eggs. Then I realized those weren’t my only options… I could put anything in there I want. I relate this piece to myself because often times people who first meet me tell me I am not what they expected me to be like at all… so in order to portray that I filled the nest with cube-shaped eggs. One is cracked and coming out of it one will be surprised to find a fried egg leaking out onto the outer edges of the nest.

 

 

Ceramic Making: The Beginning

I’m not quite sure how I feel about clay yet… I remember making pinch pots and learning how to score and slip in high school, but I also remember not being very good at it. I struggled on the first day we went to the Ceramics building. I was very unprepared and had no idea where to begin. I played around with a few ideas for a while, but ended up scrapping an entire coil pot I had spent almost all of class making.

The next class was a bit more successful… I had made a few drawn sketches of what I wanted to make. For my vessel, I was thinking of making either a hollow elephant head or a turtle shell. After taking a few opinions from my peers, I decided to go ahead and try the elephant head (though it seemed rather difficult.)

In the end I really liked how it turned out! Making the entire head and trunk hollow was difficult, and his tusk an ears are EXTREMELY fragile… but if his trunk manages to stay up and he doesn’t fall apart, I would consider this a successful piece. I have also made a hollow, cylindrical  vessel for him to sit on like a lid. I have yet to decide how to decorate it, but hopefully I will finish it be next class so I can start working on my next piece.

Ceramics from Islam

Islamic potters are known for their use of white and blue color schemes as well as luxurious metallic sheen. European  ceramics original inspiration and technical knowledge comes from Islamic countries. According to Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Arts, success of the Islamic art is based off of “a love of colour, a taste of geometry and pattern, and the ability to adopt and adapt.”

Landscapes in south-west Iran supply pomegranate groves with colors of scarlet flowers and rose. In avoidance of human imagery due to religious reasons, “geometric and floral designs flourished in a way unknown in the icon-oriented Christian world.” It is thought that Islamic culture does not receive enough acknowledgment for originating and inspiring the works of Europe and Asia.

As the Islamic world “acted as a middleman” in major trade routes of the world, the European searched for Oriental silks and spices. In using their ability to “adopt and adapt” to the demands of the Europeans. Islamic and Asian potters began to play off one another’s ideas to appeal to the European traders.

“The skill of the Islamic potter now lies in the way he adopted the Chinese model, and adapted it to his own taste.”

White tin-glaze was soon created by the Iraqi potters, and Chinese white porcelains led to the development of stone-paste bodies to try and mimic the translucency of the Chinese imports. With the addition of color and arabesque design, the resulting innovations now created their own unique style with a specifically Islamic character. 

“It is a matter of great urgency, in these days of international, inter-racial, and inter-religious tension, that Islamic artistic and cultural traditions should be understood and appreciated in non-Islamic areas of the world. It is the hope that this will introduce the works of the great craftsman potters of the Islamic past, and that through understanding and appreciation of their unique contribution to the history of the world ceramics there will grow a much deeper respect for the Islamic world as a whole.”

 Dish with poly-chrome glazing , Presented by the American Research Center in Egypt, 1974

Two different traditions of glazing were inherited: a glaze fluxed with soda or potash, called an alkaline glaze, and a glaze fluxed with lead-oxide, called a lead glaze.

A new period of experimentation was under way. For this piece, different glazes – green, brown and yellow – have been used to portray a highly stylized peacock. Although the design itself is remarkably sophisticated, it is evident that the experimental phase is not yet complete. Alongside the decorated areas, the potter has left parts of the bowl surface completely un-glazed.

 Jug with epigraph decoration, Bequeathed by Professor A. H. Sayce, 1935.

After initially using the stone-paste body to imitate the white Chinese porcelains, the Islamic potter in his accustomed way started to add color. First he added a single color to the glaze – cobalt for blue, manganese for purple, or copper for turquoise. In a lead glaze copper turns green, but in the alkaline glazes used on stone-paste, it turns turquoise, and it is this turquoise which has been the hall-mark of Persian ceramics and tiled domes ever since its introduction in the eleventh – twelfth century. The design on the jug is calligraphic. The words and letters had a holiness of their own.

Bowl with radial design and drop-shaped cartouches (1638), Gift of Gerald Reitlinger, 1978.

As figurative decoration declines, the commonest designs are now geometric with a variety of arabesque patterns used as fillers.  This piece has a ‘Maltese’ cross which is emphasized visually by its color, by its wide, white border, and by the wide, white surround to the pear-shaped cartouches in each of its arms.  The primary cross-shape is emphasized by its pointed arms, and by the use of the same arabesque design as a filler for each of them. The four secondary arms have square ends and the designs used as fillers alternate, two and two. The result is that although the bowl is decorated with an eight-point radial design, the eye reads it as a cross.

Jug with flowers against a fish-scale background, Bequeathed by C. D. E. Fortnum, 1899. 

 The appearance of recognizable species of flowers on Iznik ceramics was due to the rise to eminence of one particular artist, Kara Memi, at the court of Suleyman the Magnificent. Kara Memi transformed Ottoman illumination by introducing naturalistic flowers, such as tulips, roses, hyacinths and carnations, to replace the traditional, stylized, Islamic floral motifs and arabesques.

Although some traditional elements were still retained, the naturalistic flower designs clearly captured the imagination of the Iznik potters. First making their appearance in the 1540’s, they were accompanied by a new color scheme. To the blue and turquoise of the preceding decade were added a soft sage-green, a manganese-purple, and a soft greenish-black for outlines. Experiments were made with coloring the background, and a fish-scale pattern introduced to help alleviate the monotony of a large area of single color.

Resource: http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/7/674/676

“Line” Design Project: Construction Day

So after frantically trying to gather all my materials, I finally began and nearly finished creating my art piece! This work is totally interactive and the pipes slide in and out so anyone can create their own version. In the photo below, it is missing one tube because it cracked. It will soon be replaced and the entire box will be filled. It was a long, cold day in my garage but with some help from my dad, I completed the construction! Now all I have to do is clean it up and decide on whether I should paint or stain it tomorrow.

Though the design is somewhat simple, making this piece took a lot more consideration than I originally thought. Because I had rendered it out on SolidWorks, it was already scaled out. But because I was using a 1/8 circular saw blade, the loss of 1/8 of material had to be taken into account for the measurements of all of the cuts I made. So if a plank was supposed to be 11.5 inches, I had to add .125 when I measured, knowing that the .125 would be removed in the cutting process. I also had to take into consideration that I did not want the pipes TOO tightly packed so they could easily slide around one another, so I left a small space inside the frame (meaning I made the bottom and top horizontal pieces of wood a tad bit longer than necessary.)  Since it had to fit six pipes across, I measured the diameter of the pipes, multiplied by six, added .125 for material loss, and another small fraction for the extra space.

Another measurement I made included the exact diameter and length of each pipe because though they were supposed to all be the same, there are always going to be some small variation in size. Because my smallest pipe was  almost a half inch smaller than all of the other ones, I had to base our final cut length of pipe off of the smallest pipe.  I only had enough pipes to make the EXACT amount of tubes, so it was crucial I use the pipes in the most efficient way.

(Almost) Finished Piece

Materials

Safety First!

Full Length Pipes and Circular Saw

Pipes

Wood Planks

Cutting the Pipes

The Wooden Frame

Constructing the Wooden Frame

Math

Measuring Pipes

“Line” Design Project: CHANGE OF PLANS

So after a few hours of critiquing other studies and seeing what my classmates had to say about mine, I noticed a lot of my peers attention was directed to the straw study inspired by Tara Donovan. The fascination wasn’t just with the material used, but the fact that it was interactive. When holding the study, one could push the straws through in either direction. (Shown in previous post.)

After reflecting on the critiques and thinking about materials and concepts, I rendered an image in SolidWorks that realistically represents what I plan on constructing for the most part. I originally planned on using thin vacuum piping, but am currently looking into cardboard mailing tubes to decrease the weight of this piece. Each tube will be individually placed within the wooden frame and will be able to slide back and forth from either side.

The idea is that the “artist” will stand on one side of the sculpture while the viewers watch from the opposite side as the tubes are pulled and push to create an original version of the piece. This interactive art allows different interpretations and encourages others to create their own art.

I have been playing with the idea of adding small lights or reflective material to enhance the effect of the different tube placements.

“Line” Design Process: Step 2 (Stick Studies)

I will refer to these art studies as my mixed medium “stick” studies. After spending some time on these small structures, I brainstormed with Joe and came up with a new idea to help inspire my final project. I am very intrigued by the work of Giuseppe Penone and his tree carvings. Discussing relief sculpture in class and observing Giuseppe’s carving techniques, I would love to create some kind of subtraction sculpture. For my next post, I will show my design process in using layers of cardboard to create some kind of relief carving.

Though the following studies don’t quite relate to this idea, I still learned a lot from working with line and forming segments to create these pieces. Other than the wire, all the materials used were straight which was a good and bad thing for me. The good thing was it insured my clear use of line and allowed me to challenge myself to create unique designs with nothing but straight lines. It was also hard because I felt I couldn’t explore different techniques of making sculptures, such as carving and molding.

I was really inspired by Mark Di Suvero, Tara Donovan, and Nils Udo.

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Activating Space

Activating Space

Activating Space

Activating Space

Activating Space

Volume

Volume

Volume

“Line” Design Process: Step 1

This project is all about the LINE. I must create 8 small 3D studies of line sculptures, 4 using volume and the other 4 “activating space.” Then out of these 8 studies, I must pick the best and make a much larger version with whatever material I choose.

In the beginning of my design process, I started by playing around with some magnetic toys to get my mind used to seeing lines in 3D. Though fun, these were a bit hard to maneuver and get too creative with.  Little did I know what I liked even LESS was what I tried next.. wire. Not only did my pieces start coming out sloppy and bent but my fingers became extremely sore and greasy.
I later decided to go for a different strategy… Popsicle sticks and a hot-glue gun. I found this was a much easier way for me to get creative without getting too sloppy or sore. My inspiration for this first piece came from the artist Nils Udo who was known for his giant nest earth structures. His work can be seen on my previous post. As I began to layer the sticks, I decided to keep layering and layering until the nest turned into a more 3 dimensional vessel with a volume inside.