morning light through trees.

This has been a long and painfully stressful process. I have felt several ups, and lots of downs to get to this point, and I like where it brought me in the end. I just hope my crazy mind translates to everyone else who views the piece.

My inspiration for my piece came from a slide that Leah presented to the class. It is a lighting installment from designer Tord Boontje. The following pieces are in Boontje's collection and were taken from the website.

 

I love the feel of these. they seem so precious and whimsical. It reminds me of flowers and ivy from like a fairy dream world.

I was also reading about the Dada Art movement of the early 20th century. How the events of World War I created this idea to abandon all that is considered to be art or creative works, because all that it brought us was death and destruction.

This idea brought me to think about chandeliers in general. They are usually symbols of interior prestige. Most of the time a central focal point in a room. They are most often covered with gold and silver, and drenched with crystals. An overkill item when it comes to wealth and luxury. Then I thought what would be the opposite of that?

I began to collect wood from scrap piles all around. I used nails to bound it together that had been previously used on the pieces of wood. I thought about draping it with cloth, but since this was garbage pieces, why not use garbage bags.

I tried to work the pieces together in a way that it even looked like trees, and vines, and nature. Very uneven, fragile in its shape and frame.

inside on single beam of fluorescent light peaking out. just like the light beam the morning oh so many months back.

I thought it important to work on the piece outdoors looking at the way trees would sway in the wind, and how the movement of the leaves would change the way the light came through. It caused me to miss many days in studio time, but I felt it was needed to better understand the concept of the piece.

The garbage bags were so light that the air can easily move them, causing just the slightest wind to rustle them and make it change the way the light comes through.

I felt the piece needed to be all black to better represent the original event that inspired me on that grey morning. The way the photo came out, everything in the world captured looking monochromatic.

When I step back from the piece it looks eerie and some what ghoulish. It feels much more like an art piece than a lighting piece to me. It holds some life that even myself haven't quite come to fully understand yet. I am just anxious to finally see it lite up and hanging. Photos of the final piece will be up very soon.

Hailey Taylor and Courtney Wilson Drawings

When I looked at these girls sketch books the first thing i thought, they are better than mine. I know I have my own style but I found things in both of their drawings that I would love to learn more.

Hailey is up first. I love these flowers. They are not the most detailed, but the soft shades and the delicate curves of the petals make this such a pretty sketch. It also has a hint of playfulness, which makes me enjoy it even more.

Now for Courtney. I love her self portrait drawing. It is very playful, but has so much detail too. It reminds me of a picture in a graphic novel of some sort. I love the expression. It has a lot of attitude. I feel she has the right mix. The teeth look so cool to me too, great detail.

Studio Sketches

drawing is not one of my favorite things to do. i see it's important in design and i should use it more, it just hasn't come very naturally to me. so i am still shying away from it. i have very rough skills and my drawings look much more harsh then most of my fellow students. i don't focus on detail enough. i flipped through my book and tried to find the three i felt came through better then some of the other drawings i have done.

the following two drawings came from a day i spent looking at light high the water and plants around a pond.

the next drawing was done in the studio one day just looking at light on a water bottle. i feel i still struggle to capture realistic drawings.

broken pieces... they can be fixed.

when i began working with the 2x4 piece of wood i was completely at a lose with ideas. i had no directions as to where to go or what to do. i would stare at the piece of wood for so long looking for some thought, something... and nothing.

tommy was talking to the class and mentioned something that i hadn't thought about before. splinter or split the wood. it was so different in my eyes. i began to think about previous times in life when i had seen wood that was chopped by an axe, or a tree that had been splintered by a bolt of lighting. and the shapes they made. they were much more organic than what modern saws can do.

i also began to combine this idea with my previous project of looking at light through trees. the trees were in a natural shape, and the way they bent, and moved forward and backwards in the view, they made very uneven shapes.

i also began to think about how both solar light and trees are both natural. no man power is needed to make those two things. so i thought, how about if i do not use power tools, do it all manually.

i began to splinter the wood. i did use a chinese saw to cut some groves in the first 2x4, but that later turned out not to work at all.

i toyed around with the pieces for days, with no luck what-so-ever on what to make. all the masses just looked crazy and to much like some previous chaos things i had done. i wanted to build more upwards with this one idea, and with so many small pieces and no real way to connect them, it just didn't have the power to stand.

things began to feel pretty hopeless.

i loved this splinter idea, but what to do with it. then i talked with mira.

with a simple playing around with the knots and holes that are created when the wood is splintered, we though how cool would it be to try and put it back again... a humpty dumpty story if you will.

yoko ono did installment pieces like this. she would take apart things, and then give instructions on how the pieces was created again.

so i began the process of splitting the wood again with a new 2x4.

and follows is the final outcome.