Cranking it Out

For the past week (until 10/21), with a mass of built up energy, I pulled my nose out of the books and finally got my hands dirty. After last Thursday's discussion with Janie, Seth, and a a few other peers, I realized there was so much exploring, discovering and experiementing I needed to do that could only be achieved through making/thinking with my hands, and not so much with my head.

Therefore, this weekend I returned home again for Fall Break, and again, hit the Paint Creek trail a couple times and began to collect (4 hours), however, this time I was collecting with a specific focus of "creating an environment" this time. I looked for objects that had specific forms, textures, colors, and beauty that would fit into a container and depicts an ambiance, rather than sticking an acorn inside that would just say "hi, I'm an acorn inside a box." I also was collecting things that I knew would be able to withstand a long period of time and wouldn't degrade or dry out with a couple of days, changing its appearance completely. My findings were a great.

my favorites

While looking for natural objects, I was also looking for man-made containers to take apart, dissect their structure, and experiment with in terms of form and space. I went to Salvation Army in both Ann Arbor and in Rochester, along with another thrift store, but was unsuccessful.... I will be trying again this coming weekend with the ReUse center and PTO.

Surprisingly where I was most successful at my house here in Ann Arbor. Tuesday, I collected at least five different sizes of pop cans, tons of cardboard, pill/vitamin bottles, pencil cases, glasses cases... basically anything I had around that I could stick a knife through. Once I started thinking outside of only water bottle cases, I realized the materials and forms that make up these other found objects could work very well to convey specific environments. (Overall traveling/collecting: 3 hours)

Wednesday I sat down and began writing/sketching/diagraming which types of environments I was envisioning, descibing the type of light flow I wanted, objects inside, structure, color, depth, textures, ect. that I wanted for each in a very specif manner. Creating the inside first helped for me to identify the form of the outside. After I had some solid ideas, I sketched out object renderings of my ideas (3 hours).






From there I began cutting holes into the bottoms of everything I collected and put the objects up to my eye. I took notes on the quality of light flow, how it reflected inside certain objects, the depth and width each object provided and what I liked/disliked about the object. I began sticking different forms inside another, covering the holes with different fabrics, papers, leaves, and other semi-translucent objects to control light and depth (2 hours - then 1 hour continued into this morning).








Today, through mid-morning studio Erica and I began to talk about my collecting and experimenting and got into a great conversation as I shared my work, objects, and sketches. We discussed ideas for other environments, other ways to house them, potential objects to look for, process and more, giving me even more ideas on what to look for/create with this weekend(45 minutes-hour?).

Section was spent sharing our progress in small groups, however, only half the class presented, and I will be presenting mine this coming Tuesday. I plan to share the same things that I had to show for today, but plan to move on quite a bit more, having more objects that I've dissected, but also, I plan to attempt to fully render, as much as possible, at least one object with an environment inside to gain a sense of how the two interact with each other and in the palms of my hands as I look inside.

Note: I plan to post pics of these sketches and my writings... as soon as I find my camera cord! So hold tight for those of you who are visual thinkers like me, and can't follow what I describe :)