Final Project

I struggled with this one at first.  Though I wanted to do a very large and elaborate project at first, it took some time to come to that idea.  The initial idea was to incorporate one of my previously used themes of power, and the dichotomy of the box - the natural wood product but manmadeness of the glue around the seams.  I continued to stay with that idea until the very end. Though I am sure there were several spots that I could have improved upon, my final product was satisfactory and clearly delivered the message I wanted to deliver.

Public Art Drains

I chose to go with a topic that was not necessarily the positive image of the theme water.

This is a public art project highlight storm drains in downtown Meadville, Pennsylvania.  Human waste is a topic that is typically avoided, but one that needs to be brought to attention.  The theme of toxic waste was chosen to demonstrate to public and remind viewers how any polluting act can end up contaminating the water most important to the community.  In Meadville, people need to be aware that in the thousands of gallons of rainwater washed into French Creek every year, there are also molecules in solution, stemming from human activities that can be detrimental to this body of water.

For this design, the area on Chestnut Street, between North Main and Water Street was selected, making a total of eighteen drains to be highlighted.  To demonstrate this design, four of the drains were selected, located on Chestnut Street in Meadville, between Water Street and Market Street.  All of these drains are highlighted by painting on the sidewalk, the surrounding street and curbside, and the drain itself.  They each highlight a different aspect of the toxic waste theme.  Each drain should be assessed as an individual project first and foremost, as the drains are far enough apart to do so.  After the individual composition is assessed, the theme between all of the drains should be considered.

Toxic Waste -

The manhole cover is painted to resemble a drain pipe.  The pipe is leaking toxic waste, with mutated creatures and frothy bubbles on top of the puddle of waste

 Litter -

This drain has painted plastic cups, glass bottles, cans, cigarette packets and other miscellaneous waste is scattered to the side.  A slimy trash juice puddle overlaps the drain and litter.

Car Pollutants -

A car is painted onto the curb and sidewalk with exhaust gases spewing out of its tailpipe.

 Coal Plant -

The light post and streetlight pole are painted to resemble coal stack towers.  Coal is scattered around the drain, with a coal plant with smog painted on the curb and sidewalk.

Site Pictures and Plans

After much debate in class, we settled down to just five sites and individually chose our own sites.  I decided that one of the best opportunities offered was the one to beautify our storm drains and manhole covers.  When we got the map of all of Meadville's drains, we decided to focus on just one street: Chestnut Street from North Main/Diamond Park to the Downtown Mall.  With three of us working, and no desire to overwhelm ourselves, we thought that three drains per person would be a good number.  Here are the drains that I was assigned.  They are located on Chestnut Street between Market Street and Park Street. 

South side of Chestnut St and Market St (appx. 3')

North side of Chestnut St and Market St. (appx. 2')

South side of Chestnut St, between Market Street and Park Ave. (appx 2')

Some ideas that I had, after looking at Meadville's own art, other towns' street art, and considering our theme of "water," included: 

•  modeling each drain in a similar style, but having an individual French Creek critter dominate the scene
• a single one panel abstract water design that changes in style from drain to drain (ie Impressionist, modern, etc)
• the above, but changes in color
• a theme that tells a story up and down Chestnut St. (see the blog entry Urban Art for barrier projects that do this)

Here are some really neat ideas from sewer drains around the world: 

http://www.gotweird.com/2009/05/creative-sewage-drain-art-from-brazil/

http://www.japemonster.com/selection-of-unusual-things-89-pics/tumblr_lfmkm7jfeg1qz4s3wo1_500

Environmental Art

For the environmental art research aspect of my class, I included links (the far more important part), with examples from either the artist or particular project.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24

http://www.matthewtaylor.net/crudeawakening.htm

http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/WORKS8.html

http://www.sun-boxes.com/

http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/WORKS7.html

http://www.environmentalartblog.com/2009/11/eco-graffiti.html

Urban Art

We were asked to do some research about both public and environmental art before starting on our own urban art projects.  Here are a few of my favorite examples of public art:

http://www.designer-daily.com/a-wall-that-plays-music-when-it-rains-21016

Post Alley,  Seattle
http://daily.sightline.org/2011/08/26/alley-alley-in-come-free-2/

The following are all from:

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycstreets/collections/72157625266555302/.

Plan Ahead - NYC

Container Series - NYC

Welcomed Guests - NYC

Worker Bees - NYC

Tillary Street Barrier - NYC

Urban Garden - NYC

Collages

This assignment I had trouble with.  For some reason, I have a hard time understanding what exactly my professor means when an assignment is given.  For my first attempt at collages with composition, my pieces had little to do with composition.  I liked them well enough, but they were very simple, and didn't really dabble with the idea of composition.  When I better understood the assignment, I attempted one more.  I started by combining two of my first pieces and adding more depth to them.  As soon as I got the thumbs up, I had this cat in the bag.  After I found a subject or idea to focus on, the second two were not terribly hard.  I am such a perfectionist though, that finding the exact materials I wanted to work with were difficult at times, and getting it just so was even harder, I think all of my final pieces came out well.

***UPDATED COLLAGES

Object Transformation

This happened.  Looking back on it now makes it seem like much longer ago ago that it did.  Now, all disassembled and in my room, it doesn't seem like all the work I put in really came to all that much.  So art goes. 

We started off with an object of our choosing, and the assignment:  take pictures of the object, create a list and do a line drawing.  This seemed easy enough.  I am not the biggest fan of drawing, but I like to think that I am better than average bear at photography (it helps that I have thumbs and not claws).   My drawing didn't turn out too poorly, and I really enjoyed giving it some color.

. 

The next assignment was to make a major change to our objects.  My lamp had morphed so much already.  The more I had thought about it, the darker the object seemed to become for me (oh, the irony).  Here I am, sitting in front of a blinding light, and all I can think about is the darkness behind it.  Had I been better with shadows and math, I would have loved to attempt a piece centered around the playfulness of light and dark. After a little experimentation, I found that it was much more difficulty than I wanted to deal with during the school year.  Instead, I disassembled it, and came up with this guy, struggling to keep the light around him: 

But how to use the rest of it?  I love LOVED what I had done, but it didn't feel complete for the assignment given.  So I did it.  I broke the lamp.  After much thought and experimentation on how to incorporate it, I tried to depict two scenes, both about the struggle to keep the lamp and the brightness alive.




 



Then - another obstacle.  As I was setting my object up for display, I reread the criteria and realized I had to incorporate the words from the list, along with the drawings and photographs into my piece.  GAH!  I wish I could just go back to the one little guy, pulling up the light.  But I trudged forward into the battleground and did my best.   After many attempts, I can say, though not perfect by any means, my assignment was well done.

Line Contours

Drawing:  I've never been very good at it, at least in the sense of art.  I doodle and have a definite cartoonish  style when doing it.  It's nothing that has ever really interested me, but I gave it a shot.  In class, we were instructed to do blind contours of another classmate.  Though it was ridiculous to look at the creation, I really enjoyed this.  Because everyone's was so cartoonish, I was definitely less self conscious than usual.  Also - it certainly helped me become more aware of the space that you are dealing with when doing any art on a canvas of sorts.  

Mind Maps

A seemingly impossible task.  Take everything inside of your mind, the things that describe your hobbies, interests, who you are, and your skills, and put them in an organized tiny little space.  I don't know how all that stuff manages to fit in my brain, let alone on a finite space.  So, after thinking about it for a while, I decided I wanted to attempt a mobile.   I thought that the dynamic movements behind the piece would bring this rough outline of my mind to life a little bit. 

 Well, quickly after beginning, I realized that I had greatly underestimated the amount of time needed to complete such a project.  After spending most of a Friday afternoon on the project, and making not nearly enough headway, I accepted that this was not going to be anything like I imagined. 

It turned out to be OK, but, being the perfectionist I am, there is much I feel like I could have improved upon.  However, its an interesting piece to look at, and it does the job that it was meant to.  So here are my skills:

Thoughts on: 8-hr Art show

This was not the first 8 hour Art Show that I have attended at Allegheny College.  I perused the gallery twice throughout the day - once about halfway through, and once at the very end of the gallery.  One thing that I did notice was how far (most of) the artists had come.  I think that progress I was least impressed with was the pixelated version of Abraham Lincoln (though this does not mean that I dislike the idea behind it).  This was also the one exhibit that remained unfinished for the gallery.  

One of the pieces that made me think was the balloon piece. With what seemed like hundreds of helium, brightly colored balloons, Daren Miller encourage the viewers to write down wishes, to be tied onto the balloons and set free.  I really liked this idea at first; I tend to be a very emotional person, and this metaphor (though a bit overused in my opinion) pulled at my heartstrings.  However, the more that I thought about this, the more that I became disgusted.  I had worked, for the past two summers in environments where the largest collective group of litter was balloons that had escaped and popped over virgin environments.  Letting loose all of these wishes - well, they are just going to end up as trash somewhere else.  Still, I came back for the release, and was once again disappointed.  They had tangled all the balloons in huge bunches (not what the artist wanted), and thus only a few were able to escape on their own.  

There were many other exhibits that I enjoyed at the show, but this one was the one that caught my attention the most.

Summer Archive

The task:   Gather all the materials you think you may need for an art project, plus an assigned list.

The latter part was really quite simple.  I had everything on the list at my house already, and I was fortunate enough to open the email with the list while still there.  I think it took about thirty minutes to root through all my craft closets and my father's workbench to find everything I needed.  Even the hometown map was just hanging up in my garage.  Maybe it's a good thing that my dad tends to be a bit of pack rat!

With the items for the list in hand, I proceeded to rummage around my room for things that I thought I could use.  I must admit that this task was much harder than I imagined.  I think that this art class will be much different than ever imagined, and I cannot possibly predict everything I will want to have.  The other thing I learned is how much stuff I really have.  After living out of a suitcase for an entire semester, I know that I don't need everything I have.  I am pretty sure that I have at least enough clothes to go a month without doing laundry - and that's just my wardrobe!  When examining other peoples' ideas like this: http://www.storyofstuff.org/, it kind of makes me feel like a bad person!  This class will tear me down the middle - do I keep all of the things, or should I continue working to become the minimalist, with an easier life?  I like things, so this will be hard.

Here is a list of the materials I officially gathered for the class:

• a mess of acrylic paint
• watercolor paint
• pencils and erasers
• markers, crayons, colored pencils
• fabrics of many colors and textures
• old gun book
• guide book to india
• map of north east and jaipur
• hindi print
• scrapbooking paper
• oragami paper
• knickknacks from travels and experiences
• leather pieces
• wires of many sorts
• toolbox
• glitter paint
• magazines 
• several boxes
• other things

 Also, a collection of some of the images I am really attracted to (none of which are my own - thank you pinterest): 

Halchal Cafe - THIS PLACE ROCKS