Final Project

My final project was a refinement and a progression from my midterm project. I continued with the ideas of drapery and movement and absence of body. I was excited with the way my ideas developed throughout the semester to culminate in the three different pieces of my final project.

One of the pieces consisted of three individual, free standing sculptures made out of plaster and fabric. I made them by draping fabric soaked in plaster over human bodies until they hardened and then I took the forms off of the people and they left a trace of a body but the body was absent. I connected the three pieces with fishing wire and they were all tied to a weight and elastic. When the weight was moved, the weight and elastic would move all of the different sculptures in different and strange ways. I was inspired by dancing, and I wanted to suggest a sort of dancing movement with stiff objects that suggest an absence of a human body.

The drawing part of my project was made by pouring plaster over color drawings in blob-like shapes that look like footprints or fragments of something that was once whole. This was the only part of my project that I was able to explore my interests in color and fragments. These plaster drawings compliment my third part of my project which was fabric draped over fans. The fan pieces were the most sophisticated and complete part of my project. I used white satin fabric and sewed it so it would cover the fan and collect the wind to create an illusion of a form underneath the fabric. There was one covering a floor fan and one over a taller fan. My final project really brought together and refined all of my interests throughout the semester and I was extremely happy with the way it turned out. I learned a lot about different materials and movement that I will be able to incorporate into my work in the future.

The Cooking Class

Here is a long overdue copy of my notes from the cooking class :)

TIRAMISU!!:
250g mascarpone
3 eggs (fresh)
150g sugar
buy a coffee maker (decaf) and just fill it up it costs like 10 euros
in bowl A) mix yolks and sugar till it gets kinda frothy/bubbly-appx 5 min. then mix in mascarpone
in bowl B) whisk the whites till they have peaks
bowl A) put in 70% chocolate chips
put bowl B in bowl A ("in a friendly way") add some more chocolate chips
then soak lady fingers in coffee... and then layer it all up.
then put 100% cocoa on top and some more chocolate chips on that

Bruschetta!!!!:
rub raw garlic on bread, then toast.
chop up some tomatoes, put them on the toasted bread with dry oregano and sea salt

Tagliatelle!:

for each 100g flour, use 1 egg (100g flour and 1 egg= good for 2 people)
make a circle in the pile of flour and break eggs into that crevice.
add about 1 tsp salt
squeeze/mix ingredients together by hand
wrap in saran wrap rest 30 min

bolognese meat sauce (each region has its own) in large flat pan: red onions, 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, onions, garlic, red win reduction, pork, beef
-meat mashed w/ fork and add 1 cup red wine
let wine evaporate, pour a can of boiled tomatoes in -chopped
1 cup water in after the tomatoes
medium heat for 10 minutes, at some point throw in a handful of basil leaves

making the noodles after 30 minutes have past....
roll out the dough in parts with lots of flour. really flat, as big as a pizza. then cut in half, fold over, then roll into 2 inch section. cut in 1/2 inch pieces from there (sorry... dont know how to explain!)
put flour on top and toss. fluff and break up pasta till it breaks into individual noodles
in pot- 2 tbsp salt plenty of water

I hope this can be helpful in attempting to replicate the recipes! :)
Sorry that it is so jumbled and incomplete but its all i managed to pick up!

yummm.... tagliatelle alla bolognese...

Final Project: Openings

This work is nothing I could have imagined creating before coming to Florence, but simply going through life and doing the exercises for class, the forms just naturally developed. I can see, looking back, how strongly I was influenced by the Bobali gardens, Anthropology Museum and La Speccola (even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time). I became interested in framing and seeing through one thing to another at the Bobali, an interest that did appear in my midterm work, but much less intentionally. And looking at the final form of my project, I can now see similarities with the objects I was attracted to at the Anthropology Museum and the forms of presentation that interested me at La Speccola. The experience of these places in Florence combined with more specific, personal events led me to think about dualities and how two separate things may combine.

The final form of my work this semester combines these interests. When the viewer approaches the wood form intimately, the two holes combine in their vision to become a single opening. The lower wood form with a silt carved down its center also relates to the pair of photographs. These images combine to form a personal significance for me, but can be interpreted in multiple ways.

Some more photos from the opening

Me with five of my artworks!

Gabby's installation and one of Rachel's drawings.

Genevieve speaking with some guests about her artworks.

Amelia's installation.

Installation and Final Show

Prior to this past week, my opinion was that the process of installing was simply a matter of time. However, it proved to be a serious of frustrating road bumps that reminded me that perfect isn't always possible, and thats can be ok.

My final work was the pairing of a photo with a time progression video of bleach working on fabric. My original idea was to display the video along with a slide projection of the picture. Unfortunately, for the final exhibition the slide had not yet been created from the photo. As a substitute, I used a spotlit photo because I still wanted to maintain the presence of real light.

This past semester has really allowed me to explore where my tendencies and interests lead me and to learn how to make my personal experiences and emotions something that can have a universal impact. I can only hope that my piece in the final exhibition did just that.

More photos from the opening!

Amelia with Gabby's project

Genevieve's artworks at the opening

Alana and three of her paintings

Recently, I have been working with humor in my works and I have been trying to figure out the difference between humor that lies solely on the surface and humor that resonates with the audience and makes them think. In other pieces, I was working with the theme of absence vs. presence.

a not so final project

For my final project, I continued working through concepts from my midterm having to do with Sufism and the Whirling Dervishes. In this project, I wanted to comment on how moments of clarity are ephemeral. We can think we understand something one second and then the next second that clarity is gone and we don't know where or how to find it again, and we can't seek it out because then it won't be able to find us. Going off of this idea, I decided to work with motion (spinning), red and blue transparencies, and light. I wanted to create a project where the light could shine through these moving transparencies so that occasionally the shadows caused by the light would interact and overlap to create purple. But that overlap would only last a short second, and then the shadows and transparencies would keep moving on and on, only occasionally and unpredictably deciding to overlap again. This project took on many many forms as I encountered various technical difficulties and physical limitations.

The first image posted here is one of the beginning stages of the project, which would have worked quite well had the fan that I used as a spinning motor not broken. As shown here, I attached blue and red transparencies to the bicycle wheel. The bicycle wheel would spin and because of the two lights, two shadows of the spinning wheel were made and the shadows could interact. (This was actually a second stage of the project, as in the first stage I had two bicycle wheels spinning individually on two separate fan motors. Each wheel had a color on it and the color shadows would interact. This would also have worked except that one of the fan motors broke, after which this idea was changed into the above picture of the one bicycle wheel with one motor)

After both fan motors broke, I experimented with a lot of other ways to approach this idea. I worked with attaching transparencies to the actual fan and making them spin, I tried suspending colored disks between two fans, I tried making the disks move between two fans, and eventually I came upon the idea of a windmill, something that spins naturally. I decided to ultimately work with this form and suspend a red and blue windmill between two fans so that the windmill would be constantly spinning in one direction and then the other and then back to the first direction and so on. The shadow that this spinning windmill created forced the colors to interact, which was a goal of mine from the start.

This project has been a whirlwind of ideas and thoughts and trials and frustrations and experiments and excitement. To be honest, I was not completely satisfied with the outcome of my final project because I feel as though I still have a lot of thinking and experimenting to do with this idea of ephemeral clarity. In a way though, I am actually very glad that I am seeing my final as more of a work in progress because this idea is not something that can be captured easily. I don't even know if it can ever be completely captured, because that's kind of the point in the first place. If after a lot more experimenting I find that this is something that cannot be captured in a way that does this phenomenon justice, that impossibility could be the starting point for my next project, and so the thinking and thoughts continue. I am extremely sad to be leaving Florence, but because I can not see this project as "final", a part of me doesn't really feel like I'm leaving after all.

final project

Some screen caps from my final video, where the black spot grows according to a sinusoidal wave and the lines wiggle accordingly at different speeds. I'm happy with the effect and could stare at this for hours! From a video I took 2 months ago at a soccer game.

So this is it

Here are some pics of my final project. For about two weeks straight, I did drawings at the Botanical Gardens, some at the Boboli, because I had been wanting to do outdoor observation drawings since before I even got here. The project was kind of selfish because it was about bettering myself in being able to portray what I consider beautiful, but then I ended up making transparencies from my drawings that I scanned, photoshopped and placed on top of the drawings with pins creating a 3D space.

 I also had a projection I made from some leaves that I scanned and edited.  I then placed white cutout leaves on top of the projection with small drawings of the places that have impacted me underneath the exact shadows of the cutouts. 

Interventions

Here is some visual documentation of the interventions I did several weeks ago, largely in response to personal issues and the current sex scandal in the Catholic Church.

Final

I spent a lot of time the past two weeks altering found images and then painting the altered image. The first photograph shows the way my paintings were presented in the studio, and the second is of one painting that I particularly liked.

final project

thisismyfinalproject
I have been working with trying to articulate an emotion by finding processes that refer back to the original feeling. Sanding, layering, scraping, and handling paint and other nasty things in my hands.
I have also been interested in self-instruction, and the role that has in my work and in the way I self reflect, on the work and in general.

For the past few weeks I have been casting the neg. space of different boxes. 

So we've basically been given time to explore our ideas further. I took some more photographs of wine and reflections in it, playing with different materials and locations. I like the idea of layering in a single surface. Before, I worked with sculptural forms that actually created layers of visual material whereas now I'm working on a single surface.  On the left is a  picture I took when I was in Pompeii. I was staring at my reflection in front of the casts they made of the deceased after the volcanic explosion, and I liked the idea of seeing myself present within the context of what was in front of me and also behind me. On the right is me playing with this concept. I'm holding a lighter that somehow actually burned through the metal casing right after I took this picture and burnt my hand.. :/

Stills from a video made in response to first-hand experience and to the public word. Do we have to be physically present in order to be there?

A photo I took last week in response to a newspaper article.

The first image is a still from a video I made while experimenting with bleach this past week. The second image is a sketch that came from back-lit photos that I took on our visit to the Boboli Gardens.