artbygrace7

[artbygrace7]

Final Portfolio, 04/22/22

Final artist's statement

The most difficult project for me was the ephemeral project but also the first shadow box project. For the shadow box project I kept wanting to attach a story to the objects that I was first going to use but I overcame that by forcing myself to think about how I could just focus on using objects to play with the space within the box. The ephemeral project I had a challenge completing it because some of the twigs kept breaking but after teaching myself to be more patient it eased the process.

My favorite assignment was the ready made assignment because it forced me to think outside of the box when it came to thinking about how to repurpose the meaning of certain objects as they came together in a sculpture. I also loved the opportunity to say a statement that I had on my mind which is something I love to do in my work.

Working in 3d has opened my mind to many new possibilities in making art. Possibilities that I did not know I had. I was so used to being confined to paper and pencil for so many years. Now being introduced to new mediums has brought me a new excitement to art that I have not felt in a while. It is a fresh new way for to experiment and also say what's on my mind.

[artbygrace7]

Titled "Grim Reaper's Wrath" 04/21/22

Artists statement for Ready Made sculpture

My understanding for this assignment was to combine together objects that would cancel out each other's use while also making a commentary about pandemic life. I made two sketches where both talked about the topic of the pandemic and they used materials relevant to it. In my first sketch I drew a styrofoam head with a plastic face shield mask cut out around the lips in the shape of a heart and with fake red toy lips placed on mouth and a covid-19 vaccination card plastered on it. I also wanted to add in some sort of metal thorns around the headband of the face shield mask to allude to when Jesus was crucified because in a way, the topic of the vaccines against COVID-19 have been extremely controversial. I used the element of the cutout heart and the metal thorns because the heart cutout would remove the face shield's purpose of covering the nose and mouth while the thorns would cause pain while wearing it. For my second sketch, which is the idea that I ended up executing,I used needles with the combination of a grim reaper's scythe to symbolize the deaths caused precaution was not taken against the virus. I made the needles impossible to use by using spikes at the handle to cause pain when it is being used and then putting rose petals around the needle so it can't be injected into anything. The scythe was turned upside down and I covered the entire handle in spikes so that it would be hard to hold with an entire hand grip. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and would like to incorporate the ready made concept in my own personal works soon.

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Ready made sculptures can successfully convey messages to their audiences because there are so many ways to do so. The artists that I am soon going to mention have created ready made pieces conveying messages of shock factor towards the art world, trauma, the importance of cultural identity, healing, and what the art world's definition of what art was at the time. The sole idea of how ready made sculptures are created are why they are a suitable platform to convey such messages. Two everyday objects being convinced to cancel out each other's practical purposes and uses gives the artists a chance to challenge themselves creatively while also giving a new form of life to these objects in a way that could tell a story.

One of the first examples of ready made sculptures was Marcel Duchamp's "Bicycle Wheel" and Duchamp's goal was to challenge how the art world defined art at the time. Meret Oppenheim's "Object" was a tea cup covered in fur made back in the 1930s which was considered to be very shocking at the time became one of the first staple three dimensional pieces in the surrealist art movement. Oppenheim did not mean to send the art world into a frenzy but she did and caused people to look at everyday objects beyond the limits of reality. Artists from today such as Eric Paul Riege and Guadalupe Maravilla took more of the story telling art when making these sculptures while still using elements of the ready made process.

Eric Paul Riege used this medium to talk about the story of the importance of his cultural heritage the story of those who came before him. Riege fully immerses himself in the creative process by incorporating almost all of the five senses when creating each piece. Riege also uses his platform of story telling with his sculptures to show how the gift of creating fiber art has been passed down throughout the family. Riege's identity is sacred to him and it is present in every aspect of his work because he cherishes the beauty in knowing that a countless amount of hands in his town touched the materials he uses in his art before he did. How the texture feels, where the textile comes from, and its colors are all a part of Riege's creative process as well. Lastly, Riege interacts with his unconventional pieces, when they're finished, as if they were living things which conveys the message that we can keep our culture living forever if we work to preserve it.

Guadalupe Maravilla used his ready made sculptures conveying the message of talking about his trauma coming here as an undocumented child and how that trauma manifested itself as a cancerous tumor within his body which he eventually had to heal from. Maravilla combined unconventional objects such as gongs and anatomical objects to talk about how sound baths healed the organs in his body post radiation treatment for his cancer. Maravilla further personalized his work by adding pieces that he gathered from the areas around the route he took to cross the border as a child. Interaction with undocumented immigrants to create the work is also very important to Maravilla as he wants to connect to the community that he once belonged to. Many of his ready made have also turned into shrines as he prays for the undocumented children of today who are imprisoned in cages by the US government. Guadalupe Maravilla used his art to heal and as a platform to spread his message. Many artists have done the same and many artists who are developing can realize that with their art they can achieve many meaningful things at once, as well. Whether they be practical, emotional, political, or spiritual.

Grace Alba, 04/21/22, written statement about videos from artists at the ICA

[artbygrace7]

Sculpture titled " Scarlet's Cage" 04/19/22

For my emphermeral sculpture, I chose 5 different locations to take pictures of the sculpture at. The first location was at the beach which I chose because the type of twigs I chose contrasted well against the color of the sand and made my sculpture pop out more. The second location I chose was in the middle of the green grass at a park nearby my house which I went to because this background was very well in the element of the twigs that I was using. I had to capture my sculpture from a lower angle in a way to make sure that the twig sculpture wouldn't blend in with the grass but its structure was still visible. For my third location I chose to photograph this sculpture next to a body of water which was a lake in the same park. The sunshine made the sculpture stand out against the green tones of the lake. For my fourth location I chose the concrete from the back alleyway behind my house. The sunshine made my sculpture cast a shadow onto the ground, causing an interesting effect with how the sculpture was photographed, almost causing more dimension. My last location was on a stack of reddish-brown tiles which I thought complemented the color of the twigs well.

Creating this sculpture was very interesting because the process in itself was very organic. I created a base with the strongest and thickest twigs and used the smaller/thinner twigs to build up on how the structure was going to go on. Most of my twigs were thin curved inwards, I felt that it would be natural to make a cage-like structure using these twigs with the thicker twigs as a strong base. My intuition guided my hands towards that result. I did encounter some struggles because the twigs are so sensitive and fragile so I did break some of the twigs after applying/glueing them. I did like how my sculpture turned out although I would like to redo this style of sculpture again with twigs in another format (not in an abstract form).

[artbygrace7]

Sculpture titled " Scarlet's Cage" 04/19/22

For my emphermeral sculpture, I chose 5 different locations to take pictures of the sculpture at. The first location was at the beach which I chose because the type of twigs I chose contrasted well against the color of the sand and made my sculpture pop out more. The second location I chose was in the middle of the green grass at a park nearby my house which I went to because this background was very well in the element of the twigs that I was using. I had to capture my sculpture from a lower angle in a way to make sure that the twig sculpture wouldn't blend in with the grass but its structure was still visible. For my third location I chose to photograph this sculpture next to a body of water which was a lake in the same park. The sunshine made the sculpture stand out against the green tones of the lake. For my fourth location I chose the concrete from the back alleyway behind my house. The sunshine made my sculpture cast a shadow onto the ground, causing an interesting effect with how the sculpture was photographed, almost causing more dimension. My last location was on a stack of reddish-brown tiles which I thought complemented the color of the twigs well.

Creating this sculpture was very interesting because the process in itself was very organic. I created a base with the strongest and thickest twigs and used the smaller/thinner twigs to build up on how the structure was going to go on. Most of my twigs were thin curved inwards, I felt that it would be natural to make a cage-like structure using these twigs with the thicker twigs as a strong base. My intuition guided my hands towards that result. I did encounter some struggles because the twigs are so sensitive and fragile so I did break some of the twigs after applying/glueing them. I did like how my sculpture turned out although I would like to redo this style of sculpture again with twigs in another format (not in an abstract form).

[artbygrace7]

03/03/2022

3D Carving Assignment

Titled: Ethereal Being

For this assignment I had a lot of fun carving the piece of soap. I'd actually like to carve a piece of soap on my own outside of this class and I have an idea of what I want to do already. This assignment was supposed to be spread over the time of four classes but the first day of class with this assignment I accidentally may have done too much. I'm afraid that I may have messed it up but I kind of just let it turn out into whatever my hands were going to let it turn into. It was quite meditative to work with and I realized that I accidentally turned it into a little character, not human like but it has a personality to it. As if it had two legs and two arms. That was not done on purpose because I just kept carving and this is my first time carving so I don't know if I may have carved too much but this was my end result. I definitely struggled with the base because I used pieces of wood and I don't know how to cut wood. I did not buy anything pre made but I had to ask my dad from help. I don't like to use too many sharp things that are big because I don't have too much strength in my hands due to the medications I take. I think for the carving piece I want to do outside of class I'll want to use a cork base instead because it could come out neater and it could be less dangerous to deal with than cutting wood. I also would like to make it a mixed media piece by incorporating some acrylic paint on the sculpture. Over all this was the most fun I've had in a 3D class, I hope that my next carving piece will be better and I'd like to practice it more.

[artbygrace7]

02/22/22 Progress pics

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02/17/22

3D Art: Carving Assignment Day 1

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02/13/22                      3D Art: Assemblage Project

                                            Artist’s Statement

   When I first approached this assignment before the final instructions were given I was very enthusiastic because I had a lot of ideas and narratives that I wanted to incorporate into my art. When I realized that I had to use nonrepresentational objects and a nonobjective approach, I was challenged yet excited because I was forced to think outside of the box in terms of always feeling like I have to tell a story. This approach led me to pay more attention to the shapes of objects and how together based on weight distribution/composition could create a dynamic of the objects that feed off of each other’s placements or shapes/3d forms. I am very used to the idea of only focusing on what the end product of the art piece that I’m making will look like and then getting discouraged when I realized that it doesn’t look like how I wanted it to in my head. The nonobjective approach in art prevents that issue from happening when I create an artwork like this, especially an assemblage piece. I would say that I am happier with the result of the symmetrical piece because I prefer uniformity and neatness over the disproportion of the asymmetrical piece. Taste-wise, my preference is why I gravitate more towards a Joseph Cornell piece than I do to a Kurt Schwitters piece. I’d like to attempt the asymmetrical piece with different less organic objects in the near future to further challenge myself because I have a harder time understanding asymmetry in art and realizing that asymmetry may not always mean having to put objects in random places in the composition of the art piece. Overall I enjoyed the process of making these pieces and I’d like to incorporate assemblage style pieces into my portfolio to add more variety to the type of art that I’d like to make rather than just always sticking to painting and drawing. 

  Several of the objects that I used I actually made while others I found around my house or my neighborhood. I used objects that were aesthetically pleasing to me but also had distinct shapes and forms. I used broken cement triangle chips from a small construction site around my house. It was a challenge to use this because it was quite heavy and it would not hold onto the glue very well but I was attracted to the uneven qualities of the triangle shape of the cement chip. Mixed with my other objects from the asymmetrical assemblage piece, the triangle cement chips fit uniquely well into the other objects that I have made. I wanted to use an old wire charger but it was not holding up well to the glue and I wanted something with more form to it, so I wrapped the wire charger cable with aluminum foil and then drenched it in hot glue gun glue so that a different type of texture would be included into this piece when I spray painted over that wire charger cable wrapped in aluminum foil and hot glue. I also used circular objects to distribute the weight around unevenly so that it would be asymmetrical. For the symmetrical piece, I used objects that were more commonly found in my household but some that were also very dear to me. I used an old keychain and a fake designer necklace. I also used a knife and a set of press-on acrylic nails because such uniformity would contribute to the symmetry and even distribution of weight between the objects within the piece. The bows both on each side and the elf ears on each side also contributed to the symmetry as well. I incorporated bits of the wire charger cable wrapped in aluminum foil and hot glue in this piece as well to unite both the asymmetrical and symmetrical pieces together. I used a cardboard box and to cover the edges of the box I covered the edges with fake leaves/fake flowers while also painting both boxes white to bring unity to the two different pieces. 

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02/08/22 3D Art: Assemblage Art Assignment

All objects are spray painted and have to dry a bit before tomorrow when I glue them together in their boxes. Edges around cardboard box have to be installed as well.

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02/03/22 Assemblage Assignment: Day 2

For the first box that is symmetrical, I used some different objects that I added. I added elf ears, an empty jewelry box where I put my set of fake nails in it. I put a knife stabbing a rubber circle object and then lined up by the pearl necklace. I put ribbons and a birthday ribbon with my old keychain. Then on one side I had a set of 3 lipglosses and on the other side I had 2 triangle shapes with the elf ears. I used my old phone charger and dropped hot glue on it lining up around the empty jewelry box. I also put a cleaning bottle cap and on the other side I put a measuring tape. I am going to surround the edges of the cardboard with aluminum foil and combine it with the dried leaves I found. I am going to spray paint these objects in glossy white tomorrow. For the asymmetrical box I used the charger wire wrapped in hot glue wrapped around a tinfoil figure I made that stands up, and some pieces of concrete blocks I used. I also used a dish scrub and two bouncy balls. Along with another tinfoil spiral object I made and smaller pieces of wire cable in glue I put more dried flowers that I am going to spray paint white.

[artbygrace7]

02/01/22 3D Art, Assemblage Assignment Day 1

I have several 3 dimensional objects that I'd like to use for this assignment. I've used some old 3d puzzle pieces, mini Jenga pieces, parts of a fidget toy that I've broken up, a package for vending machine toys, cellophane paper (which I intend to stuff with tissue paper to give it form) and because of its stiffness it will be able to stay in shape after being spray painted. I have some dried flowers which I'm not sure if they're nonrepresentational but I've messaged our professor to ask if it's okay to use, if it's not I will remove it. I've added two bouncy balls. I've also added a pair of press on acrylic nails which I'd like to glue together to create some kind of more 3d form. I've included a piece of a fake plant that I'm going to be cutting up in half to make a shape that's not as recognizable and I am using two old wire chargers to make a shape inside the box that would move the viewer's eyes. I am also using a set of accessories from a Barbie doll house's bathroom. I'm using a mini loofah used to scrub dishes because I like the texture on it and I'm using an old keychain. I'm using two never opened lollipops because of their shapes. I may use a fake pearl necklace (I might break in half to use in both boxes) and I'm using measuring tape. Last but not least I'm using a cap for a bottle of fabuloso cleaning product, and I'm using broken pieces of cement. I am also using broken plastic nails and a piece of gauze that I would to dry up and make hard so that I can use. Both of my boxes are rectangular shape and the first one is 11x14 inch while the second one is 9x14 inches. With the boxes being cardboards, I will use the cellophanes paper to try mimic another material at the edge of the cardboard where it was cut to take away the cardboard look. I am still looking for mini boxes to use inside each box. I have some match boxes I may use (that are not pictured) and I have an old jewelry box that I may use as well. Lastly I will be using white glossy spray paint for sure. I think that I would like to use white for both boxes at the moment.

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Sketches for symmetrical balance in art and asymmetrical balance art. 01/30/22

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Some more objects for the assemblage 01/30/22

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01/28/2022

      For my assemblage, I have not acquired all of the objects yet but I have acquired a few of them. I have a plus-size barbie doll who will be the main focus of the piece. My topic for the piece will touch upon sexual violence against women. How women’s bodies are treated as disposable in a society where our worth is unfortunately only measured through how much pleasure we can give through our touch or our looks. That objectification of our bodies is what leads to the sexual violence targeted toward women. I want to have the Barbie doll in the middle of the box that I’m using with a message written on her body in blood that says “why do they only want my body”. The Barbie doll, the red lipstick, white gauze, marbles, dried flowers, two blue ribbons, plastic ribbon, makeup palette, and pearl necklace are all going to have their significance in this piece because the barbie doll’s body is going to be treated the way that the body of a fish in polluted water is going to be treated. I am wanting to use plastic film paper to give the effect of the doll being underwater as if she is being drowned and forgotten. I still have more objects to pick up for the assemblage but this is the idea that I have in my head.

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Assemblage Artists Videos Reflection

01/28/22

     As an artist struggling with artist’s block now, I am appreciative of learning this style of art. I’ve always seen this style of art at Art Basel or art museums when I was younger, but I never knew what it was called. I have been struggling with art in the 2d form lately and this new medium will give me a new way to think creatively. To many non-creatives, it may seem silly, but I see a small glimmer of hope when I look at the world through the lens of George Hems and I see how much beauty a repurposed rotten piece of wood can bring to this world. The motivation for George Herms, Betye Saar, Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, and Kurt Schwitters was giving life, purpose, and value to objects that others saw as trash through assembly in the form of art. Each one of these artists had their way of adding a creative touch that would create visual depth and tell a story that would captivate the viewer. George Herms seemed to collect the most unwanted objects that most people would never even look at, such as items that were leftover and burned from a house fire or a nail ridden rotten piece of wood, but he would turn them into art with his sophistication of how he used his placement/arrangement of the objects to create balance. Betye Saar collected objects around her for her assemblage that showed strong symbolism and imagery of racism such as racist toys or logos, also used items such as cages, scales, window frames, washing boards which would convey a metaphor to the viewer about her view about racial injustice. Many of her items were also from different cultures and her items were used in a specific format to display the message that she was trying to convey. Joseph Cornell chose to use his shadow box assemblages to tell stories of whimsicalness and mystery using layers of objects to obscure the interest of the viewer to not let the viewer see every part of the box at once. This was a key part of Joseph Cornell’s adding intricate detail to his assemblages through composition and how he played with negative space (dark and light space). Cornell also used asymmetrical balance by dividing most of his boxes into threes. He often collaged cubes, film stills, rolling balls, wooden birds, and gifts from his muse in his assemblages to either add a sentimental touch or to tell a story behind it. Louise Nevelson frequented furniture factories and asked for the scraps of old wood because she saw a vision of what those wood pieces could be turned into. Nevelson played with lines and flatness when it came to how she wanted to use the objects in the space for the composition. Kurt Schwitters assembled his work a little differently than the aforementioned artists because he started out as a painter. Schwitters was heavily influenced by German expressionism which showed in his choice of color in his assemblage (green) and used that to contrast the cubism influence in his style as well. Schwitters used items such as a varnished half-eaten apple, a broken paintbrush, or a broken piece of a painting. He would also incorporate paint strokes which speaks to his origins of being a painter. From using geometric shapes to more organic curved lines, this shows how Kurt Schwitters was open to many different forms of movement with his shapes in the assemblages. Each artist collected their own objects in places near and dear to them, Kurt Schwitters collected a top of a paint tub while Joseph Cornell collected his ballerina muse’s tulle for the assemblage. George Herms collected junkyard pieces for his assemblages while Betye Saar collected everyday tools that go on to tell profound stories. Each object has its own ability to be able to tell a story and become a work of art. As an artist, it is our duty to orchestrate beauty by using the method of balance, composition, color, and profound thought.

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06/17/21

2D Art Portfolio

- 4 pieces from class work we've done

I've taken several art classes at MDC North and out of all of the classes this has been the most challenging one for me. Abstract art is very far from comfort zone which is a good thing bc it gave me the opportunity to drop the old habits of dropping what I was making if the piece wasn't coming out how I wanted it to in my head. I am a perfectionist at times but it drives me to the point of not making or not finishing anything which is not good for my creativity but this class challenged this habit as the point of nonobjective art is just to go in making the piece and creating freely as you go. It's something I will take in my art process at home for my personal art work and I'm very thankful for it.