Shoot Photo

Ahhhhhh!

Post for week of April 1st:

Mirror nest finally done! and on a scale! just needs to be photographed and taken to north somehow :/ 

Clothing nest.... a few hours away from finished. Goal is to finish this one today and then photograph all the nests by the end of today.

Sheets nest, I got lotssss of feathers :) So I am planning to try those tomorrow.

QUESTIONS:

1) I bought a beautiful lace bed skirt and decorative pillow that resemble the lace-like trim on my sheets and bedding at home. I was going to try to incorporate these into the nest, but I am worried about bringing in too much texture. Any thoughts? I think it needs to be subtle if i do bring them in.

2) Does anyone have any extra frames I could borrow for the show??? I bought a couple, but I am having trouble breaking down to spend more money on them if I only need them for the show... 

Thoughts?

these were some of the nests I was looking at for inspiration and technique

here is the nest in progress with redoing the clothing.

Any thoughts?

I want it to look messy, but in a structured way.

Home Run

clothing nest before removing the outside layers

wearable nests??? just kidding!

My beautiful armoire!

 

stuffed big nest

3 small stuffed nests

Post for week of Friday, March 25

This past weekend and week were spent finishing up my crocheted nests by stuffing them with sticks, gathering furniture, starting my labels nest, continuing my clothing nest and continuing on my sheets nest.

I was very please to find last weekend at the ReUse Center, a beautiful armoire and set of cabinets. The center is letting me borrow the armoire for the show, which is awesome because thats a huge money saver! (Even though I'd love to keep it anyways) It was definitely a large task though getting it into the studios, but with the help of some stronger art school boys we were able to mingle the piece inside. I had borrowed the art school's university vans to pick the piece up and it fit just perfectly. It is definitely useful to have those as a resource for us students, however, I don't think many people know about them so they should definitely advertise them more.

For my crochet nests, I have 5 completely stuffed (which took about an hour of stick and nature collecting, and then 5 hours stuffing them all), and I really love the way they are turning out. I collected more than just sticks to put inside, like pin needs, pin-cones, leaves, etc., but I think I am going to stick with mainly the sticks because I like skeletal structure they give in contrast to the soft yarn. I want to use some lose pin needles though to fill the bottoms of some, especially the big one I have done, to give it a more comfortable feel, like something could have lived in there. I still have one more small one to stuff and the biggest one.

My clothing nest was going well... I got it to sit nicely on my wall, in the corner of my room and I really love the way the nails on the inside are turning out. I began to layer the outside with strips of clothing, however, I felt like it wasn't saying quite what I wanted. After talking to Seth and Amanda about it, we felt that the clothing reminded us too much off clothes stacked in a laundry pile. So I removed all the clothing from the outside and am starting over. I have started to shred the clothing even more, into smaller strips and chunks, and am trying to just use only the clothing pieces to attach themselves to the structure, rather than sewing them on like I did before. I got a few inches done on the top so far, and I like the way it is going. It is much messier, but gives a much more natural look at the same time. I think the key is not to think about how it is going to look, but rather, what is going to provide the best nesting structure, getting the clothes to look like they are what's holding the nest together. I still want opinions though before I go too much farther so I will post pictures a.s.a.p. Overall I spent about 14 hours between last weekend until now on the piece.

The sheets nest is going well... slow, but well. Erica brought in some wonderful stuffing and bed springs I plan to incorporate into the piece. I still need to get feathers to place on the inside, but I am confident finally in the direction it is going and just need to keep working on making the whole thing consistent with the areas I love already (the areas with the pillows and sheets shredded and mingled together). 

This next week is going to be insane, I have lots to do in terms of finishing up all the nests and photographing them... but I have a plan for each day so i just need to stick with it all :)

nails in walls, nails in nests

Post for Friday, March 18:

This past weekend and week was spent finishing up my mirror nest (10 hours), crocheting one last larger nest (4 hours so far), adding more to the sheets nest (3 hours) and building the structure, filling it with nails and installing the clothing nest (11 hours). I also made a schedule for myself for the rest of the semester to have completed specific nests by certain dates, along with getting materials and supplies and photographing some of the nests.

By this coming Tuesday, March 22 I plan to have finished the clothing nest and installed on my wall (i've been experimenting with how to install it non-permanently, but am running into a few problems with trying to cover how i installed it because it is so heavy, ~4 lbs). I want to have it stay installed in place before i cover it all the way with clothing. I also want to have the mirror nest finished (I only have about 3 more pieces to glue down and then I need to find a scale to place it on-- from there I will decide if i want to place anything in the middle or leave it open for the scale to show through), and complete the last crocheted nest and fill them with sticks.

I also am going to the ReUse Center, Salvo, the PTO and other places to look for furniture this weekend. I want to have the furniture in my studio by Tuesday if possible. I really want someone to come with me to help me pick out the furniture. I wanted my roommate to come, however, she's been really busy studying for 3 exams next week, so I may be by myself after all.

well my weekend is pretty full ahead of me!

inprogress photos

nests mid-week progress photos:

underneath structure for clothing nest

beginning of inside filled with nails

position to be installed on my wall

mirror nest from above

Traveling nests

Post for week of 3/11:

This past week along with over break was spent reworking my second draft of my thesis (4 hours) and crocheting nests ( about 36+ hours). I crocheted approximately 7 nests so far that rang in size and shape, and experimented with 3 different yarns. Initially starting I was trying to vary the size, but I wasn't seeing a large difference between the first three so then I started to add holes and play with the form until I got one really massive (about 3.5 ft in height) nest. I wanted to play with the difference in materials and how the crochet knots looked from each yarn. Two of the yarns are furry and organic looking, but colorfully striped (with greens and the other beige-blue). The third one was a much thicker yarn that is more rope like, but a natural off white-cream color with very thin and tiny dark strands mixed in. I thought that I was going to only use one of the colors, but I like them all so much that I think I will use all of them, and possibly add one more yarn type (but not totally decided).

Right now the nest kind of just hang, but I plan to use sticks to fill them, stretch them, and manipulate their forms. Janie suggested that I think of other things that I could fill the nests with. I made these nests as a representation of comfort and joy. I used the yarn as a symbol for my love of knitting and crocheting - I find comfort in that repetitive action and the texture of the yarn flowing through my fingers.

When I think of other things to fill them with, I think of possibly books, or tea bags, drawing materials, or clothing... things that remind me of sitting in my bed where my own little space is. I think the reason I initially imagined sticks though was because of the comfort I feel being in the woods, walking through trails. When I first envisioned these nest, they were hanging from the tree branches of the woods behind my old house. I liked the way that although they are all crocheted in similar forms of the weaver bird's nest, they all seemed to have their own character from the way the sticks poked out of them and stretched them. I definitely want to play with what to put in them, but I am still currently leaning towards the sticks.

As far as the other nests go, I ordered more yarn and want to create another large crocheted nest out of the blue-beige yarn (the big one now is green). I also am continuing to work on three other nests simultaneously- the sheets one, the mirror one, and a new one with clothing. This one speaks to how I feel about a relationship I just ended. I am using the clothing of the boy I was seeing for about two years to layer the outside. I plan to shred and rip the clothing into strips to create a layered ruffle texture on the outside (or perhaps braid the strips). I think this will help break up the colors of the clothes rather than just laying them on the outside as a whole. The inside however, will be filled with nails all pointing inwards. I will do this by creating the structure first and then poking the nails through the structure.

This nest will hang in the corner crevasse of my wall near the head of my bed. I will need to probably build some sort of two walled right angel structure though to build this onto for transportation purposes. If anyone has any suggestions... I am highly open to some! :)

I will add pictures very soon! This is all probably hard to imagine via written text.

Strawberries, Cookie Dough, and Bird Shit… Oh My?!

pillow with wire coming out

(Sorry to post late!- I didn't have access to internet until today due to two days of traveling)

Blog Post for Friday, Feb 25

This past weekend and week was spent split between working on the sheets nest (8 hours) and the mirror nest (16 hours). All was going well with both nests until Thursday. I was just about to put the final touches on the mirror nest, while I did something very thoughtless. I had reminded myself over and over that because the nest was so heavy from the glass, I would have to find a sturdy support to carry it on from the bottom. However, while I presume I was still half asleep, picked the nest up by the handles of the bowl (which were towards the top of the nest) and carried it all the way down stairs….. and then literally 2 inches from the table…. The weight of the glass gave out and the whole thing went crashing to the floor.

Heartbroken and down, my roommate took me to get ice cream to cheer me up after seeing so many hours work fall apart from a silly mistake. The ice cream was delicious, but what came to follow was not quite as appetizing. As we were walking back to my house, I felt something wet plop on my face while I was mid spoonful with cookie dough and strawberries. I looked up and saw nothing but clear skies above me only to realize I had just been shit on by a bird… on the face.

Oh the irony, broken nest- getting shit on by a bird. Part of me wonders if I should take this as a sign for something, but I can’t figure out what. I could only laugh about it all. I mean really… who does this happen to. If anything, it just made me wanna get my butt moving and really start focusing on the details in both my nests. Luckily, some of the stacked pieces remained in chunks, so I thought this would be easier to put the nest back together… but in a way it makes it more confusing now that it is somewhat puzzle-like. I am about half way done again, this time only gluing the mirror pieces to each other, and not the bowl as well so I don’t make the same mistake of lifting it that way again. To my surprise, as I moved the bowl from inside the nest just to see what it would look like, I was pleased to see what the form of the inside of the stacked pieces. This kind of made me think maybe I don’t want the bowl in there anymore, and that I could just use it to continue building the structure around until it is at the top. This will leave me more room to play with what I want to place on the inside.

Also, like I said before, you can’t see your reflection from the outside of the nest, however, once the bowl is removed, you can see your reflection on the inside from how the pieces are stacked. I was happy about this aspect as well, and I feel like it gives more of a distortion in reflection.

As far as the inside goes, a fellow classmate suggested knots or tightened thread. I had been picturing knitting something and stretching bits and pieces of it over the sides to get caught on the sharp pieces before. But I really like the knots idea! I am imagining a series of threads or yarn knotted and mingled together and in layers, lining the inside. Also, now that I can remove the bowl, I can stick thread through some of the open gaps and crevices in between the shattered pieces.

For the sheets nest, things are going a bit better finally. I was a little unsure about it for a while as I was getting the base layers on. It looked too plane and neat. But finally Thursday I was able to start adding in shredded pieces of sheets, along with pillows and the stuffing and really began to manipulate things. I think its finally heading in the direction I like, the tiny details of tattering and distress.

Both professors and GSIs came by to see it (before I got started on adding the things I mentioned above) and made a few good suggestions I would like to give a try. They all agreed that I needed some heavier material that signified stress/danger, and more of it, which I totally agree. The wire right now is too thin against the mass of the fabrics. Erica suggested mattress springs, which I think would be really cool to try out, so hopefully I can bring that in right after break.

I am still struggling on what to put in the middle. I keep returning to feathers for some reason, but I am not quite sure they will say what I want… or I am afraid they will look too much like a bird had once lived there and has flown away- which is, in some way, how I do feel about home… I go home to see all these things in my room that used to mean so much to me, but now that I don’t have them with me everyday at school, I don’t think about them.

My room is an empty nest, uninhabited, but still arranged and decorated, as if it were waiting for me to come back to live in it once more.

My room is also one little piece that fits into a house, a house I have constantly changing thoughts about. They bounce back and forth between the good and the bad, the sad and the comforting. It’s a chaotic mass of feelings and thoughts, encompassed by a man-made two-story structure.

Its funny how we manipulate these structures to fit our idea of comfort, yet we can’t always achieve that feeling no matter how hard we try. I wonder if the birds experience this when nest making. Or are things always as sweet and simple as cookie dough and strawberry ice cream.

1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish

Wire peaking out of sheets

Under wire structure

Sheet nest

Stacked mirror pieces

Post for Feb 17,

Since we are using these posts as group crits, it may be helpful to read/skim my last one or 2 posts :)

So I took a break from the sheets nest for a few days and have begun my mirror nest. I was able to find a really large mirror that I've slowly been breaking pieces off of. I was suprised to find the mirror wont actually shatter (it must be tempered) but this is kind of nice because it breaks into bigger pieces when I hammer the edges and gives me a little bit more control on the size they break into. I am using a large mixing bowl as the inner structure of the nest. I originally had begun by gluing the mirror pieces all around the bowl at various angles.... however this began to look like mosaic. So i started again this time stacking the mirror pieces. This provides a very cool texture look on the outside... however the reflect quality is lost on the sides. At first I was apprehensive about this, but as i began placing the mirror pieces on the top edge i liked the idea of only truly being able to view myself from one angle and that it plays into the idea of the mirror being a deceitful (see last post for more explanation).

I am still unsure what I will make the inside of the nest out of. I am still thinking of the weight gain paste like i talked about in my last post... or possibly more of the mirror, but shattered into much smaller pieces and displayed facing up so you can see your reflection, but more distorted.... Ahhh i donno!

I think i need to finish the outside first before I'll know, but I am totally open to suggestions :)



This weekend I plan to keep working on the mirror nest and sheets nest this weekend.

For the sheets nest (its in 12C if you wanna peak), I definitely still have many layers I plan to put on. I am leaving the inside as is for now (still fairly comforting-- reasons see last post). I want to continue adding more sheets, wire and even some pillows. I want them all to have a distressed quality.

Here are my questions:

-I am having trouble deciding how much wire I want to incorporate though. Right now there is a lot on the nest because I wanted to use it in part to add volume. I like the areas of sheets that are ripped open with the wire just barely poking through. I also like the areas where I layer sheet, wire, and sheet again. I don't know if it works better with more wire exposed, or just some.

- Should I incorporate other materials?
I want to keep it strictly to bed items, but someone mentioned that the wire alone might not have been enough to display the message, but they liked the wire where it was minimal because it reminded them of bed springs. I was considering trying wood pieces from a bed frame. Thoughts?


ThAnK yOu!

Works in Progess

Post for Friday, Feb 10

This week was more of a work in progress week. I continued working on the sheets next (6 hours), but still have a ways to go. My goal is to have this next done by the end of next week. I am still toying with whether or not I want to destroy the inside padding (which resembles a mattress) or leave it soft and "comforting." I spoke with Janie about it on Tuesday and we decided it best to finish the nest with out doing anything to the pad and then decide based on intuition afterward.

Also this week I spent time toying with images I already had of some of my nests for postcards (3 hours), however, I want to continue working on them. Today I took some more photos (1 hour) I want to try on the cards before I post a final few to pick from.

This weekend I plan to start another nest as a mini break from my sheets nest and use a broken/shattered mirror. This nest will be medium size to start closing the gap between differences in size I currently have.

Next stages...

Blog post for Friday, Feb 4

As of right now I am kind of feeling all over the place again. I really like what I have created so far, but I have made enough to start sorting out the message I am trying to portray through the nests. I think I have a few different ideas floating around and I would like to find a way to unify them into one concrete concept. I do like the idea of refining my current pieces, such as the pins and pillow stuffing one.

Over the weekend I started a large nest out of sheets, pillows, fabric stiffener, and chicken wire (5 hours). The piece is in process still and is requiring many more sheet than I had anticipated, but I think this will only add to the idea I am going for. I want the pillows, sheets, stuffing (from inside the chair I used as the base) to be mangled around and tron through by the chicken wire. Yet, I still want to be able to sit in the piece... so I am struggling with just how uncomfortable I want to make it. Do I want the outer layers to appear soft with the inner resting area to be destroyed by the chicken wire? Or do I want to have the whole look stressed, but keep the inside less stressed so I can lay inside an feel some comfort. I am thinking to myself and seeing both happen because I feel both ways about home at times. I may just have to let this one play out on its own while I create.

I also bought materials to start some more medium sized ones. I bought a large glass mirror that I want to shatter it to create a protective outter layer of the nest and use some soft material inside. I was almost thinking the weight gain power as paste again. I want to use the mirror because for a while during my illness, the mirror was very deceitful to me, and me not having known this, relied on it to reassure myself I looked the same way I always had. Once my perception of myself as still normal sized was shattered, the weight gain came into my life as a source of life, sustaining myself, and a comfort on the way to recovery.
I've also considered using my old clothing in this nest, the pieces I don't fit into anymore, however, I still want to keep thinking things over.


At this point now, I think I really need to sit down though and think about the materials I am using. Like I said, I want to find a way to unify or have consistence with the nests, making them a whole. I don't know if this will be through context, materials, scale, etc., but I am at the point where it is a good time to figure this out.

Dreaming

Post for January 28th:

I have this space inside my head. I see it everything while I am laying in bed. I can't seem to get away from it. It is an older house, and I am walking through it. The furniture is minimal and everything is shaded gray and gloomy. There is no one home, but there is the feeling of recent inhabitants. As I continuously walk throughout the house I realize that inhabitant is me. Although this is a home I have never lived in, the remnants of my past and current life surface throughout the house in the form of nests. There are some in the cupboard, in the fridge, some are on the mantel, on the windows, the closet, the shower drain, or tucked in a corner underneath my bed. Some nests are repeated out of the same material, but in different forms, providing an overwhelming realness to my experiences. Others are singular in their make-up, but just as powerful when I encounter them. Some are large, that I can fit into, while others range to be as small as the palm of my hand. This home, this giant nest made for man, is using my history to provide a home for another species.

--------------------------

This week I spent messing around with quite a few different materials. I have continued to collect nutrition labels and have been cutting them up into small strips, following the dividing lines on the label for each piece of information (i.e. total calories, fat grams, carbohydrates, etc.) (3 hours cutting). This is proving to be kind of a long collection process, but this is good because it is really allowing me time to think about placement or combining the labels with other materials. I want to show an element of constraint, so I've narrowed the nest construction down to either a messy-crochet wire mesh that I've been working on (3 hours so far) that I would use to weave the label strips into, or just simply using the labels alone but placing them someplace hidden (like a kitchen cabinet)... but in this case I would want an overwhelming amount to create larger nest trying to pour out of the cabinet.

I also made two other nests while breaking from the cutting, out of the stuffing from small pillow that held a bracelet my mother gave to me for Christmas (6 hours for both). This piece of jewelry was something that I wanted very badly because it symbolizes an important concern in my family; my mother has one, my sister now does too, along with other women in my family. However, as much as I initially wanted the bracelet, I have a hard time bringing myself to wear it due to the current state of my relationship with my mother. So I decided to take the pillow that held it gently in place and rip it apart. I took the inside stuffing and molded nest forms and then used pins to hold the form in place. The pins cover mostly the outside only, leaving the appearance of the soft material as the inside. However, most of the pins are placed inwards, making the nest dangerous for an animal to actually sit in.

I also... for no rhyme or reason really, just pure intuition, played around with making nests inspired by the construction methods of the Chimney Swift (4 hours). The swift attaches their nest to a vertical surface using small twigs and their glue-like spit to hold the twigs together. These birds also tend to make their nests in common areas together (multiples in one chimney) although they are said to be not that social. These nests are really unique and amazing that they can hold onto the surface under the weight of the bird. I tried to mimic these nests by pining branches onto my wall, using some metal wire as extra support, and then pouring plaster over them to harden them into place. I really like these nests in their minimal make up and fragility. I plan to make about six of these (one for each person in my family) and then smash one on the ground to see how the material and branches break after hardening. I don't have pictures of these yet, but they in my studio if you want to sneak a peak :)


This weekend I will continue to collect nutrition labels, tea bags, and other things, but also want to test out materials like wax and food peels, skins, and cores to test how to preserve perishable items.

Post for January 21:

Last weekend and this past week was spent making nests out of a "weight gain" (supplement) labels and powder. Like I mentioned in my last post, after experimenting with the labels, I thought using the actual powder as a medium could be interesting too. I mixed the powder with just a bit of water, liquitex gel medium, and Elmer's glue. This produced a nice, but very sticky, paste that I was able to work with you form shapes out of. I found that layering the paste worked best to build up the structures. However, this meant I had to wait a few hours for the paste to start hardening before I could add the next layer. But this waiting gave me a chance to make multiple nest forms with the medium. I just kept switching from nest to nest as it was ready for the next layer. I tested different amounts of water and glue that I was adding, and even tried adding yest, but that didn't really do much. I found that although the paste hardened nicely, it was hard to make some of the forms that domed upwards. For this, I used tinfoil, plastic wrap, or other materials to prop up the paste until it hardened. I also tried baking one to speed up the drying process, which worked... but it now relates too much to food and has kind of a golden brown tone to it. I like the forms the best when they dry out on their own.

Overall, I am very happy with how the nests turned out. Most are finished, however, there were two that got quit messed up from a roommates coming home late at night... so I'll have to fix or remake those two. The total time all of this took was about 7 hours, or at least I know I spent all Saturday working on them.

Tuesday I went back to the label nest and completely took it apart and started over again (3 hours). I made an inside structure, then spray glued it and started covering it with the biggest labels. The spray glue wasn't holding as well as I had hoped and was just overall very messy. I even tried sewing some of the labels on, which worked for the big ones, but then I noticed it would start messing too much with the form where the string would pull against it. So I stuck with the spray glue but used it sparingly and super glue. It looks like a nest..... but like a hand-crafted nest. It is not messy enough for my liking and looks too arts-and-craftsy. I think the problem is that the labels are so big that they aren't giving me enough room to shape the nest like I had imagined.

I need the paper/plastic pieces to be longer and skinnier... however, then I have to give up on the legibility of the labels. But I think that I am okay with that. A friend who I spoke with about the piece mentioned that I need to demonstrate "readability," but not necessarily "legibility." So I think I will try again once more for this type of nest, but use strictly nutrition facts only of the food products I eat and shred them very skinny. Thursday morning I spent about 3 hours browsing the internet on bird nests, construction, and sculpture, and came across this artist, Fiona Hall, who made various bird's nests out of shredded dollar bills... exactly how I pictured mine to look!

Anyways, I want to remake that piece this weekend, and then continue on ward to hopefully find materials to reconstruct my sheets nest and then I have been itching to make one out of tea bags and one out of pins with pulled cotton.