in situ...

so as part of our metals program, we are host to the exhibition in situ in conjunction with dutch clogs, golden mountains, and have hosted a gallery walk-through/meet the artists, which is very beneficial to us as students studying metals. Each of the artists gave an artist talk before the walk-through, which gave us a wide range of speakers, who gave us very little or a wealth of information about them and their work and their influences. One if the speakers Iris Ichenberg started her speech in german then dutch then english, the languages that took place in her journey of living and teaching, in that order, taking from each area her how they affected her work and how it developed into something new and different with each place she went, her surroundings greatly affect and developed her work, this gave great insight to her thinking and methods. Another speaker was Lauren Fensterstock who gave a wonderful speech, giving information on her thought processes and showing her work throughout her history as an artist. Lauren was very beneficial to have because she was a very eloquent speaker, bringing in facts of her personal life and how it shaped her as a person and artist. At the gallery walk-through all of the artists were around their work and the gallery so we were able to further pick at their brains to see what really made them tick. The set up of the gallery is wonderful because there are so many wonderful pieces involved. They all create a conversation amongst each other based on materials and ideas, each approached jewelry from a very different view point, taking non-traditional materials and emphasizing them to be gemlike and the center of attention, rather than focusing on the precious. In one piece, the room to the side, you actually become the adornment in the piece, there is a cushion where you sit and the lights brighten and sing to you, almost putting you on a pedestal, where when looking in it looks lonely and far away but when looking at someone sitting on the cushion they become the jewelry and you are admiring them

new topic...seeds and pods

so thinking about what could potentially benefit my latest realization for my work i decided that it would be beneficial to look up seeds/pods and other sources where plant life comes from and is derived from. I'm not sure where this will lead me but i think looking at the forms and shapes of various pods can help to make my aesthetic decisions arrive at a different rate and through being informed about them i can then make decisions about how to execute what i will be making, where rather than just a pod or shape there is context behind what is being made and can potentially illustrate a period in the life of the plant or pod or even connected to me directly...we will find out where this research is going to take me, as of now i want to get started and figure it out

revelation/epiphany

so i finally had an ephiphany after last weeks critique where paul discussed how they resembled growths and possibly fat areas where your flaws are and it made me realize how this was the jumpoff point for my work, and that these forms had to take on a life of their own celebrating their form with movement and position (still playing with gravity and light on growth) and weight. I feel as though the first few pieces were something that i had to do because of my background and way of thinking that i have become so accustomed to and not have realized and not forced my ideas into sculpture where i could not see them fit till now. Another part of this thinking is the way that jewelry lies with one flat part to the body hidden and the front on display and thinking how to get into viewing something from every direction and adding still movement to it.

thinking...thought process

soo...even though i said that i would stop thinking about where i was going with my work, i continued to think and of course everything i was thinking ended up in what i wanted to produce and i could not feasibly produce what i was thinking of making. So i've simplified the site specific that i had planned because origionally there was too much going on, i had the pod(clay plant holder) along with a wire guided cage for it to grow along for me to manipulate, but now i think that it would be beneficial to just have the pod on the body where the plants just grow and you think about the relationship and how the plan grows with the body and how the context affects the meaning/translation that the viewer sees and understands, some examples are growing out of the stomach and how works with the body, but at the same time it could possibly symbolizes fertility. other places i'm planning on working with are the wrists, shoulders, ears, potentially the mouth and thinking about how placement can affect the meaning and how it can potentially grow into jewelry on its own without any guidance, limited guidance because i will potentially manipulate the plants with the other plants growing alongside each other, this is mainly because i have a hard time getting away from the body, i'm trying but when i'm looking at my drawings of solitary free standing sculptures there is no interaction with the space around it, i've drawn site specific ones also and it is just not the same, i have a hard time comprehending space when the work is not surrounding a form (or body), eventually i can get out of this state of mind, it is potentially not the correct subject matter for free standing, non-body adornment, because in the past it came natural to create wall/floor sculptures with what subject matter i was working on, and i've realized that i should not force something that i cannot envision it should just happen.

gallery space...

Thursday there was an exhibit opening at mobilia gallery in cambridge, it was for Kevin Coates in conjunction with Baskets as Architecture. In one of the exhibition cases there was the work from Joe Wood, who had the show previous to this exhibit. There was also furniture in the window of the gallery, near the baskets, which worked with the baskets since most were made from wood and other natural materials. I work at mobilia, so i helped to set up the basket and furniture exhibit it was very difficult to do because of the conversation between the different pieces since it was from multiple artists rather than two or three. The basket wall was built into an organized chaos, where each basket had their own space on the wall but there were so many on the wall that there was a conversation between materials and color schemes that played out in order for the display to work. There were several other spaces in the gallery where the baskets were able to be displayed since not all were from the same color pallet and design sense. One of the spaces was based on color and materials, where the colors were pastels and school supplies such as pencils and tape measures and another space was created for several houses to be put upon astroturf, because they were created from playful materials such as tickets, paper scraps and were very colorful.

Kevin Coates exhibit was on the adjacent wall and spoke about order and cleanliness. This was because everything had a uniform case and setup, everything was measured and calculated to fit on the wall where there was a blocked out and painted area for the artists' work. Each one of his pieces (which were brooches) were set up on a piece of notebook/sketchbook paper where his research came out and spoke to the brooch, showing its origin and ideas. All were around the same size and had the same feel about them as if they were all marching out of his head and onto the walls. The two exhibits complimented each other because they had their own space while thinking about structure and order, whether it be through materials or through scale and color.

body modification? non-western topic

one thing that did come up during the class critique was body modification and so i thought how to connect it to the research topic of this phase which is non-western, i looked up different areas of body modification and found one that takes place in new zealand, and i'm sure now in other areas. But the "artist" Steve Haworth was looking for a way to give a client a permanent "bracelet," The first human canvas for this art form was a woman from New Zealand who came in and asked for a bracelet. Haworth pondered the challenge, then suggested that he could place series of beads under the skin around her wrist. She enthusiastically agreed.
In years that followed, subdermal implants became popular in the community of extreme body modification. The process creates a raised area on the skin in a shape of the artist's choosing. The effect is dramatic: Implants can be most any form you can think of, from Star Trek ridges and small horns, to little stars and hearts sprayed across the chest. Many people with body modifications have combined their implants with tattoos to create often beautiful or terrible effects. this article is located at: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2006/03/70322?currentPage=all

this form of body modification, while interesting is not what i had in mind for body modification, what other cultures come to mind when thinking about this? of course there is foot binding, neck lengthening, etc. these are also interesting, but how does this connect to what i am doing, it can possibly be lightly connected through the process of modifying how you hold soemthing, how it sits on your body, does it change your posture, etc.





other non-western cultures involved in body modification is for the divine passage or sacrifice to the gods, where in the hindu culture celebrates Thaipusam by cleansing themselves through prayer and fasting. On the day of the festival, devotees will shave their heads undertake a pilgrimage along a set route while engaging in various acts of devotion, notably carrying various types of kavadi (burdens). At its simplest this may entail carrying a pot of milk, but mortification of the flesh by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with vel skewers is also common. The most spectacular practice is the vel kavadi, essentially a portable altar up to two meters tall, decorated with peacock feathers and attached to the devotee through 108 vels pierced into the skin on the chest and back. Fire walking and flagellation may also be practiced. It is claimed that devotees are able to enter a trance, feel no pain, do not bleed from their wounds and have no scars left behind. However, some of the more extreme masochistic practices have been criticized as dangerous and contrary to the spirit and intention of Hinduism. http://glennh.tripod.com/wa_sing_tpsm.htm


some may wonder what constitiutes as body modification, and the extremes of them are in australia there is a conference for body modification, the topics included are:

non-mainstream: body modification (tattooing, piercing, scarification, branding, etc)
body sculpting (corsetry, dieting, body-building, binding, constriction, negation, elongation, etc)
body politics
transformative rituals
body modification in non-Western cultures and/or in other historical epochs
transgender and/or transsexualism; intersex
cosmetic surgery
fatness; anorexia; eating
technology and the body (cyborgs, nanotechnology, reproductive technologies, transplants, implants, cloning, ethics, etc)
virtual bodies
self-mutilation
fashion
illness; pain
sadomasochism; fetishes; bodies and pleasures
pregnant embodiment
the racialization of the body; hybrid bodies
monstrosity; the normalization of deformed bodies
ageing
addiction
reading/writing the body
intercorporeality

these topics make you realize that there is more to body modification than tattooing, binding, and is more expansive to be a state of mind rather than being just a state of the body and how you can personnally change and manipulate it, proving that the mind can be as powerful as the actual physical doing of manipulation.

In the Flesh the Cultural Politics of Body Modification
By Victoria Pitts-Taylor
is a book that focuses on the many layers of body modification and where it lies in different cultures, minds, etc. It also speaks about the transfiguration/transition of the body and the endless need for transformation of the self. I would be interested in borrowing/buying the book to furthur read into it.

can the idea of tropism be less scientific?

can i take the ideas of tropism, alchemy and fertility; combine them into something less scientific and direct as i initially thought and take a less literal sense when i want to create? such as joshua davis and commonwealth did to produce these vases based on tropism, but how closely is tropism related to their pieces? website: http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/tropism_where_graphics_meets_product_design_and_digital_manufacturing_6475.asp
other website: http://mocoloco.com/archives/004253.php

where these are really stylized vases that play on the idea of tropism without actually using the plants but designing around the whole idea that light plays effect on the pod/seed growth, how connected am i to having the actual plant growing through different forms that i create (i was thinking more structural, but now possibly more podlike and flowing with delicate mazes and forms on the insides of vessels), would a larger scale vessel/teapot/etc. be the way for me? sculptures even? i've wanted to play with materials outside of metal for a while bc i miss making sculptures since metal takes all my time away from this, but i was definetly interested in playing with the alchemy thread by where a plant does not survive, but dies and leaves its remains, turning this point into gold/precious material to signify the remembrance of the plant and marking its life as precious