Week 4/5

The days are zooming by! I cannot believe that it has been 5 weeks since I started. Apologies for not updating last week. It was kind of a blur, as this one will be too I expect. I have a presentation this week, a short essay due, starting a new job at Girls Inc, taking part in the orientation for the fine arts media lab (so I can print on Fine Art printers), and starting to construct a surrey bike from recycled bike parts (this is the 2nd idea---1st was too much work). The surrey is for a class I am taking with the visiting artist Abraham Cruzvillegas. He does a lot of found art sculpture and our class is taking part in an exhibition where we have to construct a vehicle. Everyone decided on teams (thank god). Anyway, I'm kinda excited to maybe get to keep this 2-3 seater bicycle/pedicab thingy. It could making going on little errands around the neighborhood kind of fun!

At present, I have a had a couple of meetings with my advisors and they have all been very helpful. For now I am going to look more deeply into paper cutting and artists who practice within this medium. I bought a book this weekend called "Paper: Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, Cut". It has many amazing examples of artists working with paper. Some make drawings, some do installations, or furniture, or fashion. All I know, is that I have to practice a lot more.

My laser cut piece, now painted white and resting against (for now) a black resin panel. Not quite finished yet.

A piece that I am also working on. *Apologies for the sub par photography. Lighting in my studio is not the best for this. Have to bring in my own lamp I guess!

An illustrated map of London, cut out by hand with x-acto knife.

Map of San Francisco hand cut.

Studio Happenings

I don't think I have been this busy, ever. But, I have relaxed (a bit) and I'm beginning to really enjoy this! I turned in my first paper (only 1 page) on the topic of Peggy Phelan's "The Ontology of Performance: Representation without Reproduction", quite a heavy read. I still have a dull headache from the struggle to understand. Anyway, I have included some images of what I've been up to this last week.

Lace and The Laser Cutter (Oh, how I love thee!) See the laser on the left, burning out the design.

Tah Da! Presto, a 24" x 48" wood panel (1 of 2) laser cut from the vector drawing I did of the swatch of lace. It was really quite a pain in the --- to get the drawing ready, required learning some new skills (good thing) and begging the lab monitors that I could go over my 1 hour alloted time slot because it was my first time. I think I may have promised to bring baked goods next time. Anyway, I will be returning to complete the piece during my laser cutting session this coming Monday afternoon and will add the second panel to the left of this one. My plan is to paint it next, I think.

I'm interested in layering two very different subjects. In further exploring my interest in photography of images from the home, to the mundane, I've decided to look a little more deeply into the clutter that surrounds our lives and the value we place on things/objects. The below picture is the lace pattern I have made with the wood above,but with a photograph of"clutter" overlayed on top.

Victorian times and now

After a research intensive weekend, I came to my studio today with lots to do. I was looking into Victoriana, art/craft movements in England and America, patterns of domesticity from the Victorian times and now, generations, family, memory, sentimentality, and I can keep on going. The idea with all this research is that something that I read about will gel with my process, work, etc... I'm trying to work outside of painting right now and see what happens.

Today:
Using photographs that I took of things I found in my parents house, mostly to do with my mother (family pics, my grandmother's tea set, my mother's sewing kit), I traced authentic Victorian wallpaper patterns that I found in this amazing online archive. I then cut the patterns out with my handy little xacto blade. These are 11" x 17". I am hoping to go really big with these, but not before I learn how to use the Rapid Prototyping machine at school.

These are broken teacups with text transferred from a Victorian newspaper on how to be a lady.

Alright, its Friday!

Wait, that doesn't mean anything--I still have to do work!
Well, its not that bad. Its been a full week and I am really excited about my classes, teachers, future projects, research. I met with one of my advisors yesterday. It was an interesting and informative hour and 15 minutes. I felt immediately comfortable with him, which made me feel good. However, upon his departure, I felt a little bewildered, confused, and overwhelmed. He said that I need to slow down. I have jumped ahead and need to return back to the research phase. I'm to put my panels and paints away.....for now. So, as of last night I have been researching away. I'm having a great time looking through tons of archives available on ancestry.co.uk (a very interesting resource!) and I found an old Victorian wallpaper archive. I've been busy with some watercolors and cutting china patterns outs of maps/wallpaper/and photographs. I will post some pictures on Monday.

I also went to my first class "The Capp Street Project" with a fascintaing artist from Mexico, Abraham CruzVillegas. The class, and what we would be doing is going to be challenging, but I'm looking forward to it. Our collaborative project, which will culminate in a show, is to build a vehicle (bike, cart, scooter, car, etc....) that responds to need/scarcity to race around the streets that encircle our school! This girl Allison and I are thinking of creating a Trojan Horse, of sorts, that doubles as a transportable, travelling art/toxic materials trailer . This is something that the grad students will be able to use in the grad center courtyard, but move out of the way if necessary. It will also be an interesting social practice piece, if we send it out in the community so the public can participate. It might make for an interesting dialogue. Anyway, more on that later. Its obviously still in discussion.