Touch: Pain and the Hand

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: In this piece, I wanted to explore the motion and "optical illusion" of pain, as discussed in Touch. I explored the rapid peaks and valleys of pain and its sharp but fleeting nature. I used red to represent the vivid, acute sensation of pain, the sensation itself invisible to the human eye, as the illusion lays beneath my hand.

Touch: Hair

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: My intentions of this piece I made on Adobe Illustrator, Airess, were very similar to those in the "Hair" section of Touch, which states: "loose ends in one's head signal loose ends in one's life."  Likewise, my goal for this piece was to give a sense of weightlessness and unbound freedom in this work; I desired to experiment with flat shapes and soft shades to achieve a calming, loose, and tranquire effect on the piece.

Body Sculture Happenings (FINAL)

"Blood Test."

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: This was my final work for this semester and one of the most challenging pieces I have ever done. I used this project as a means to discuss the complications of my mother's Type I Diabetes and the guilt and responsibility I had felt surrounding her death. The piece was a very painful but essential work for me to experience, as this was the first time I was choosing to confront my guilt head on. 

I wanted to represent the pain she'd lived through with gangrene and the constant blood tests she would have to take everyday. I pulled away the fingers to represent the pain she experienced losing her limbs to the disease, while revealing the blood on my hands- a testament to my own guilt behind the situation and all the blood she had lost in the many years she suffered.

The song I chose, "A Little Bit Longer" by Nick Jonas, was a song that I felt was necessary for the performance. The lyrics, written about the artist's own experiences with Type I Diabetes, were ones that I have been wishing to incorporate into my work for a very long time. The words hold double meanings and hit the emotional core of what it means to be a diabetic; the song meant a lot to my mother, and I felt that no other words could describe her personal pain better. 

I did many takes recording the song. While the one I went with was slightly off-tune and wasn't the prettiest, I felt that it was the best take to place in the video. I had recorded it during an emotional moment I was experiencing while trying to work on the project, and I feel that letting myself show my sincerity towards the situation was much more effective and meaningful that making it sound pleasant. 

This project was a very painful one for me to work through. I feel that I have finally opened wounds I've been hiding rather than pushing them away. While it does not provide closure, it does provide acknowledgement for me, and I think it was an necessary step I needed to take- both in my own healing process and in my desire to spread awareness of the pain behind Type I Diabetes to those around me. 

Memento (FINAL)

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: Being that I have always had a very visual memory, for this piece I strove to work with a memory that I recalled mainly by physical sensation instead. This would allow me to build my work off of emotion rather than pictorial memory, and thus, allow it to be more abstract. 

The memory I chose was the first time I went on Rock n' Rollercoaster and The Twilight Zone's Tower of Terror at Disney's Hollywood Studios for my 17th birthday. I had always avoided large rides due to my fear of drops and going upside down as a child, so when my friends convinced me to experience these two intense rides back-to-back for the first time, my body's physical reaction was one of the strongest I have ever felt. I used these extremes and feelings to help me craft the piece. The acute triangles that sharply rise from the base represent the quick and drastic drops with and against gravity that I felt riding Tower of Terror and being launched upward from zero to sixty miles per hour on Rock n' Rollercoaster. Meanwhile, the red thread I sewed into the black cardboard represents the adrenaline rush I felt during and after the event, while the yellow thread it is tangled with represents the intense happiness I felt as a result of the blood rush and conquering my fears with my friends. 

Architecture Relief (FINAL)

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: For this sculpture, I took inspiration from three architectural periods (below): The Japanese Edo period, Soviet Russia in the early twentieth century, and traditional Japanese rock gardens. 

Taking the roof shapes of the Edo period, the spirals of the communist era, and the line work of rock gardens, I crafted a floating, lantern-like structure with inverted houses protruding from its side. I wanted to explore a fantastical, magical world where I could defy gravity and logic. I used bold lines and contrasting shapes to give the structure an almost animated, cartoonish effect that drew attention to the contrasting shapes on the structure.

This sculpture was one of my favorites this semester, as I was allowed to explore my personal artistic style in a three dimensional manner for the first time. 

Body Sculpture Happenings (PROGRESS)

Constructing the fingers:

Paper was wrapped around the fingers to capture their shape. Self-drying clay was coated over the fingers to hold the paper together, and electrical and making tape died with black ink were wrapped around to structure to give it a skin-like, rotting effect to simulate gangrene.

Constructing the blood capsules:

Multiple models were made (two failed attempts pictured below). The struggle was to find a  structure that was waterproof and would hold the fake blood solution in, while having a film thin enough to be able to be penetrated with a pin/ sewing needle (to simulate taking a blood sugar). The final version was a cap made of self-drying clay with a small hole at the bottom for a pin to fit through. The inside was coated with a clear matte to hold the blood solution (made of water, corn syrup, and red gauche) in.

Preparing the performance:

I died my fingers in a red gauche to simulate blood, an effect that would be revealed towards the end of the performance.

Memento (PROGRESS)

Architecture Relief (PROGRESS)

Soap Carving Changes (FINAL)

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: The additive and subtractive changes I made to the hippo carving were very therapeutic in that I could release some of my frustrations on the piece while simultaneously having a second chance to make it into a work I felt I could fully explore and be proud of. The final result, as seen above, is a work I feel did finally achieve this goal.

In its final changed form, I noticed that the remnants of the carving represented an organic, rock-like formation. The shape gave a much more natural and calming aura. Noticing the red vertical lines on the front end of the structure, I was reminded of a waterfall. I decided to incorporate this idea into its presentation base.

I used hot glue to simulate falling liquid throughout the base, which I painted red to connect to the lines on the soap. I poured a large puddle of red acrylic paint at the bottom of the base. I used a  pin to make vein-like lines protruding from the center to compliment the stringy, tangled nature of the glue.

I used unpainted balsa wood cut into angular shapes as the base for the soap. The light, natural color of the balsa wood was meant to emphasize the natural theme of the sculpture, while its plain coloring wouldn't distract from the centerpiece of the work. The angular shapes were made to contrast the organic, messy nature of the soap and waterfall.

Soap Carving (FINAL)

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: Of all the projects I constructed throughout this semester, the soap hippo carvings were the most challenging. I wanted to chose an animal that was unique and sturdy, but also challenging to carve, as the hippo certainly proved to be. The texture of the lemon and rose soaps varied in their consistency and would react differently when I used carving tools on them, so adjusting to these changes as I switched between them was difficult. The strong scent from rose-scented soap in particular caused me to gain an allergic reaction while working with it for extended periods of time, which provided an additional challenge when working with the piece.

After working with the Masking Tape Shoes, I figured that the best way to go about this project would be to plan out my method of carving before I fully divulged into my work. I placed the hippo model I used for reference on a rotating table so that I could view the contour of its body from all angles as I worked with the soap. Instead of carving the soap replicas one at a time, I would take turns between work on them, so that what I learned while carving out a particular negative shape  on one, I could apply to the other.

My biggest regret on this project was in the soaps I chose to carve with. My allergic reaction to the rose soap prevented me from being able to put quite as much detail as I would have liked into it. While I gave myself breaks between work sessions to recover, I still had trouble achieving the effect I wanted to with the piece. I felt it was lackluster in comparison to my hippo carving with the lemon soap, which I could devote longer periods of time to. As a result, I chose the pink carving as my subject for the Soap Carving Changes project that followed.

Soap Carving (PROGRESS)

Masking Tape shoe Construction (PROGRESS)

Shoes Masking Tape (FINAL)

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: I chose to construct Converse high-top sneakers due to their unique shape. The depth and height of the sneakers were a challenge to construct; attempting to fit the large pieces to mold around the sole of the shoe to simulate the patterns of the actual model was a challenge. The tape was very flexible and easy to model to the necessary components of the shoe with However, it was also easily dirtied, and the rough edges of the masking tape often made it hard to simulate a smooth fabric or rubber surface. A prevalent lesson I took away from this project was that of organization and precision; I needed to be very careful to what I exposed the tape to in the environment I worked in and how I handled it, or else it would come out looking messy and unprofessional.

Overall, this was a great learning experience. I discovered how to look at an object from multiple perspectives as I saw them instead of how I perceived it traditionally.

Response to Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" (1965)

Watching Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" was a very shocking and emotional piece for me to watch. The evocative sense of emotion through her attempts to keep a stoic expression as those around slowly take away her exterior boundaries with more and more greed was very powerful. The piece delicately show's the artist's ability of helplessness to and yet power over the situation she is in. Those who come up to her are able to cut her clothes in however way they desire and have no limit to however much they desire. Yet, she is the one in power letting them do so, the one in power controlling her emotions, and most of all, persuading those who present themselves in the video to reveal their inner nature as they cut her away. The vulnerability and yet stone-like nature of her face was especially moving, as she tries to be like a rock, but her emotions and discomfort and pain through the situation inevitably show as the last man cuts away piece after piece of her clothing.

Five Sentences:

• "The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale."

For this sentence, I chose this picture taken at the Santa Monica pier in summer of 2013. My body in the forefront, juxtaposed with the fading skyline in the background, shows the large sense of depth in the environment. The tourists in the background give a sense of relatable and proportional scale to the rocky shoreline beside them, as well.

• "The capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience."

When I was eight years old, my father bought a B'rer rabbit plush (pictured above) to commemorate my first time braving Splash Mountain with him. Twelve years later, I brought the plush back to the park, and my friend took the picture above while I wasn't there.The object serves as a "trace of an authentic experience" because it represents not only a product that is no longer sold at the attraction, but authentic evidence of my presence at the location in the past. 

• "The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature that which can be enveloped by the body."

The above picture was taken with two of my closest friends in the winter of 2014. We were standing in line to see the meet-and-greet characters from one of our favorite films at the time. The plushes we were displaying when this picture was taken represent such an event and the cornerstone of our day.

• "Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss."

The above are two pictures of a former attraction at EPCOT- the Norwegian boat ride, Maelstrom. The ride was a major part of my childhood memory; I had been afraid of riding it as a small girl, but conquered my fear of it with my friends years later. But as the sentence above states, nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss. Many of my fond feelings for the ride stem from the fact that it is of a memory past; it was closed in 2014 to make way for a Frozen attraction. The upper picture was taken before the ride was permanently closed, while the bottom picture was taken a few months after its closure, which is evident though the fading paint on its doors, broken hinges, and absence of signage.

• "To have a souvenir of the exotic is to posses both a specimen and a trophy."

The picture above displays me showcasing a special pass I was given at Disney's Lights, Motors, Action! show. This pass serves as both a specimen- an artifact from the attraction itself, and a trophy- proudly showcasing the special permission I was given at the event to sit in the director's seat.