Final Artist Statement

As an artist I use empathy as a means of purpose in my work, making connections between us and the environment. Discovering and reacting to relationships that exist in our world is imparative to my inspiration, as well as using the expression of conflicts within the self as a theraputic form. My interest in psychological, societal and environmental issues causes further discovery during creative process. I apply and present personal situations in a clear way to induce empathy with viewers. A recent installation of mine consisted of a tree made primarily of beer, wine and liquor bottles, referencing alcoholism internally and environmentally. The artmaking process has practiced and continues to practice my patience and problem solving skills. Transitions of conceptual choices throughout the process challenges and fuels my self determination molding my learning process. I often get excited when I have a particular vision in mind and the challenges of reaching that vision fuel my will to create it. A piece's meaning can form during as well as after I've created it. Overthought of my concepts before creation can hinder the natural evolution of my work. I experiment with new mediums to my work, which exists in forms such as installation, performance, 3D as well as 2D. As an artist its important to expose myself to new challenges and forms of expression. As an artist, I induce an awareness of empathy and proactivity in the resolution of conflicts both personal as well as societal.

process Documented

I worked on the tree for about 4 hours straight and I'm fairly happy with the way its comming along. Luckly I'm able to share the space with my friend Lisa who only needs half of the room which gives me more time to work. I've been using silicon glue which seems to work pretty well. It takes a while to set so I've been duct taping every piece to the wood until the glue sets. I added a few more wooden pieces to give it more height and volume at the top. I think it helped a lot. Heres what it looks like so far...

Artist Statement thoughts

Artist Statement in the making

What comes to mind when I think of Art?

Ideas, knowledge, curiosity, passion, expression, feeling, dramatic, documentation, observation, investigation, materialization, wonder, mystery, process, problem solving

Art is made of inspiration, questions, our influences, and our environment that helps to create us, the right brain

Themes that come up in work repeatedly - movement, environment, and psychology

I enjoy creating art because it feels rewarding and I gain a sense of release from the act of it

The evolution of my most recent work is rewarding to me. The evolution of my ideas is exciting. I enjoy watching the process grow.

Before I make art, I have a concept and think of what mediums would be most appropriate to convey it. I go through a series of thoughts when forming the concept. I ask myself why I care about the idea and analyze the origin of its inspiration. It often takes me several sessions of thinking before I actually start the making process. I’ll often sit over a cup of coffee in a local café and gain inspiration while I formulate the next step.

Stimulations of ideas- people often inspire me. The psychology, energy and movement are elements I often look towards. Life experiences sometimes creep their way into my work. A current piece of mine is about my daily thought process.

I often enjoy using my physical body as my medium. I’ve been active my entire life and have always felt the need to express in a physical way. As a child I was active in gymnastics and often danced around my home. I’m also interested in using wood as a material. I think it’s a beautiful and strong material.

A challenging way I have used my body as a medium is the fact that I’ve pushed my body’s strength limitations in my pieces.

Fragments/ pieces often come up in my work. Red and blue are common colors that show up in my work.

I rarely work in series. I often have one large piece for each concept. I would like to make a strong series eventually.

I often make art in the space it will be installed. If it’s a performance, I often practice it in the space it will be shown. I also like to sketch in public places from time to time.

Observations

A lot of apoxy goes a little way. It dries up pretty fast so you need to use it quickly which means its difficult to hold down the pieces while they adhere to the surface. I may need to use some hemp to hold pieces in place while they adhere. I think I might try out some fabrick like Andrea suggested. Today I joined the wooden structures together and am in the process of adding onto it. I'm trying to not get frustrated and be patient with this. Thats it for now...

update

I've decided I'm going to use the two armatures as supports for one large tree. I'm going to drill more wood pieces to make it taller and come together. I've cut the whole bin of bottles that was given to me and I'll need to cut more. Slowly it is coming along. ...

Nicest Guy ever

So I've been going to the local bars quite a bit lately. I've been going in and asking if I can have some empties. Preferably large bottles since I've been cutting them in half. There has been quite a bit of communication. Most of the time's I've gone, they've told me to come back the next day and they'd have some ready. Today the bartender at Flan O Brian's came to work to find the box he set aside for me was thrown out. I was surprised at how pissed off he was. He cursed a little. Then, he made me a promise. He said his girlfriend is an alcoholic and drinks a lot of wine. I'm jk he didn't say she was he just said they have a huge bin at their apartment full of about 50 bottles of wine they've been meaning to get rid of. He's going to actually bring them to Mass Art for me tomorrow! I hope it works out. I'm really grateful. Also Ulio keeps thinking of better ways for me to construct this piece. He suggested I take the chicken wire off and glue 1/2 bottles to themselves around the wooden structure. So today I got some wood from Nicole Pierce from SIM who is giving away wood she used in her thesis. Awesome Free materials yay ok thats all I have for today I'll post pics soon.

More Images

This is an example of the mosaic style I want to stray away from with this piece

process continues

These are some updated photos. I bought some epoxy which definitely works. It just means I'll have to hold down every piece w/ tape while it dries. I also found a fan which I need to bring up to the room so I'm not affected by the chemicals and to speed up the drying process. To adhere glass on glass I'm going to have to use UV adhesive which requires a blue light in order to dry. It dries so fast! Julio showed me a demo of it. I talked to a couple of my friends who had some great suggestions. Since I want the piece to be interactive, I'm going to need to form a pathway into the dirt which will make it clear for people to know where they need to travel within the space. I will either bury bottles more than half way into the dirt to create a pathway or I'll construct some glass pieces to look like plants in the space to make a clear direction.Well that's it for now...

moving along

I used every piece of chickenwire I bought. I may need to get some more. I took Andrea's suggestion of building the trees up to the ceiling and having them wind down through the space. I'm happy with the way its transforming. I also formed the roots. I am going to need another adhesive for the glass. The insulating foam ive been using will be strinctly to give mass and strenght to the structure. Right now it looks too much like a mosaic and isn't reading like a glass tree. So ,,, we'll fix that and I will post more pics since it's really looking different than the previous ones.

In the making

So I've been told to use insulating foam to fill the spaces of the chickenwire giving the tree more mass. It expands quite a bit. I did a test on a small piece of wood and attatched glass to it. I was happy to discover glass sticks to it really well. I didn't take gravity into account however. When I started using it on the structure, some of it started sliding down and slopping on the floor. why!! why I screamed in dispare lol no I didn't do that. It's pretty messy working with the foam. I think I may have to wait until it dries half way to add the glass. I started doing that a little last night and I think it doesn't look very good right now. I may have to adhere glass to glass to fill up the space because right now it just looks like glass on foam. This is what it looks like so far.

Process Documented

Pump it out!

I've decided its time to move on from the wood and start with the other materials. I have 2 wooden frames complete and have moved all my materials to the room I will be working in from here on out. I am going back to school shortly to pick up some apoxy glue and test it out with the glass. It should work. If it does I will buy my own. Right now I'm in the process of spray painting the tarps I will be using for the dirt. I took out a camera from the Av dept. to document the work and forgot to bring it back on time. They charge a dollar an hour so I had to give $17!! I think that is crazy. Way too much money. Oh well. So heres what I have so far. I just want to get this thing done, it wont escape my mind until its completed.

I appreciate Tim Noble and Sue Webster's work. They are so precise in the way they've constructed the trash and light to form such accurate portraits. I've seen their work before but came across it again and thought I'd make a post.

wood

Process is definitly coming along now. It feels great to build. I went in the woodshop last Sat. from 11 am to 6. It was awsome. So far I have one base and one almost finished armature of wood. Judith helped me tremendously which I am extremely grateful for. I had a lot of fun using all those machines. I felt like a powerful woman! haha

Curious

One thing I often wonder about are unkown thoughts of pedestrians and why they move the way they do. Why do they choose to kick a piece of trash? why do they pick it up? Why do they keep the certain amount of space around them as they do? While googling about pedestrian body language, I came across an entertaining website titled Pedestrian Spy. The owner of this site takes photos of random people from his fire escape and post's them on the internet with fictional funny stories and assumptions about who they are and what they're thinking. Check it out. It's really funny.

http://www.markallencam.com/pedestrianspy.html

Thought of the day to remember for future refrence

"Make Art Expecting to Fail" That notion is one of the best advice I've gotten in a while thanks to one of my best friends Shawna. She's a photography major at AIB and a wonderful friend. This phrase and way of thinking pushes the importance of process and reminds us that failing is a lesson. We can gain from failing instead of dreading it. I'm going to keep experimenting and accept the outcome of my efforts.

Update on process

After talking to a few experts it has gone through my thick head that I really do need to build a really strong armature for these glass trees. I went to good ol Home Depot and bought several pieces of wood and chicken wire. No I'm not building a chicken coop. I'm going to have to do some math and figure out how to drill and glue the pieces together into a strong skeleton. In order to get organic winding looking trees, I'm going to have to wrap them in chicken wire and attach pieces of glass to it that way. I might have to drill holes in some of the pieces and hang them from the branches. I'm not too familiar with the woodshop but before I go down there I'm going to have to draw exactly what I need on each of the pieces to make it easier for the poor person who has to help me. I don't like having to ask for help but I sure need it. I've used some equipment in there before and an extremely patient and generous woman helped me. I forgot her name but I really appreciated her help. Thats all I got for now....

Ahh Process

Process of art well any process has its ups and downs. When a person has an in depth challenging project in mind, others comments can be slightly dimming to their vision. Its possible I have been a little too optomistic and naive in my chosen idea. The more sculpture and glass familiar people I've talked to, the more bothered I have become which in some ways makes me want to do it that much more. From the reaction of most, I've gotten the vibe that my artistic vision overrides my mechanical ablilty as a non sculptor. One thing at a time...

Reasearching Joan Fontcuberta

Topics approached: Joan Fontcuberta is a spanish photographer who touches on the knowlege of people. He plays with our perceptions and deals with the notion of reality.

How is their work connected to a larger context? His work is connected to where we live. In his work he uses the placement of our mind and memory. The context his work is connected to is earth as our world and how we react to it in terms of the definity of knowing.

How does he present his work? Form: His form or used material is digital photography, photograms,. Content: Joan's work includes topics such as science, art history(particularly his favorite Spanish artists), and human perception of place/environment and fiction.

Concept: Joan Fontcuberta's work is primarily based on reality as we know it or think we know it. He transforms data from familiar objects into fictional imagry.

Methods: In his piece "Landscapes of Landscapes", he used data of various images including maps, as his source material and translated them into fictional digital landscapes that contain an extremely crisp quality. He also takes close up shots of various body parts and uses their data to creat beautiful mystical landscapes.

Impressive: The process of Fontcuberta's work is impressive to me. It must be challenging to transform images to such an extreme using exact data from the source material. The asthetic quality of his images are also exciting.

His work adds an interesting contratdiction to the notion "seeing is believing". As a fairly gulable person, I often believe realistic looking images. I often read them as honest representations without questioning thier reality. His work reminds me that I should constanly question what I see. The playfulness Joan's work is very attractive. His recreation of information changes the definition of the product. His work makes me think of our environment in a new light. It reminds me that our knowlege of matter can carry several definitions.

Sources: Periodicals: Art Papers 30 no3 My/Je 2006 pgs. 25-7
Art Press no 314 84-5 JI/Ag 2005
Internet Sources: http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/fontcuberta_joan.php
http://www.artnet.com/artist/6336/joan-fontcuberta.html
http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/fontcuberta/efontcuberta.html

patient process

Above are some sketches I've done so far. I've been talking to people with knowlege of glass. I'm in the process of making appointments w/ some glass faculty. My mind is bombarded w/ information. I'm going to make small scale models before I dive into the real thing. I was told there are two kinds of adhesive used for glass. One of them is UV and needs to be completely flush on a surface in order to stick. The other one I was told about seems easier to work with. I'll be taking notes of frustrations, and happy accidents during the making.

thoughts during process

Glass Glass and more glass is all I keep thinking about since I came up with the idea. I'm still working though and asking myself those questions we're programmed to question as artists. What do the materials im using refrence? What are the elements of trees and how do they correspond with glass liquor bottles? What is associated with trees and those bottles separately and together? How do I want the tree to look? How will it be lit? Where is the space most appropriate for this installation? Will I be able to construct the piece in its temporary residence or am I going to have to try to build it in the studio and move it hoping it wont break on the way. aaahh lots and lots to think about. One thing at a time. Thats the way you gotta do it. The Mission was cool enough to let me collect bottles from them. I have 2 cases of various beer bottles. I need to rinse them soon before they stink.

Glass Trees

The Idea for my semester long project was inspired by Cornelia Parker's piece called Hanging Fire. She creates new meanings by using pieces of evidence. Parker reconstructed the woodburnt pieces by haning them so they appeared weightless and energetic. I really enjoyed the fact that she used fragments of a distaster to create something beautiful. Living in the city, I've noticed an abundance of glass liquor, wine, and beer bottles on the ground. Often times left under trees these bottles could be considered an inorganic or part of our landscape. They are evidence of Boston's night life as well as day life. They are also evidence of events experienced by the people who've left them. Having said that I was thinking of taking pieces of these glass bottles and forming them into an installation of life size trees. I want to transform them into a surreal landscape. Trees have always been beautiful to me. I've always been captivated by the beauty of thier characters. I'm excited to take this project on. It will be an exciting challenge to work with glass in a sculptural form.

Thoughts on today's discussion 1/25/07(Portfolio)

A lot of inspiration was presented in today's portfolio class during our discussion about the ICA. It was interesting and helpful to hear various experiences and and formulated ideas from the show. Being forced to openly discuss ideas in a group setting can be gruling for those who are shy but is always a benificial experience. I enjoyed the fact that everyone in the class participated to make a suggestion and/or presented a question to another classmate. It's a great way for us to help eachother as artists and future teachers. I enjoyed the sketching assignment because it forced me to get more intimate with the work. I also think it was a sucessful way to open up today's discussion. It is always helpful to share another artist's work before vocalizing your own.