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If it isn’t the latest fashion trend we won’t allow the human species to be recycled,

Our hearts to be reused, more like thrown in a landfill because you can’t be saved here,

No matter how many shirts we decide to wear that claim we are going green, we don’t change we are selfish

Wrapped up in a diabetic tornado, it isn’t sweet here. We’re dying."- Toni Marshall

This quarter in art, hearts will change and beat a different tune, we are getting in touch with ourselves.

            My project came about as I was sitting in a book room surrounded by, obviously, books. In a fit of temper I picked up the Encyclopaedia Britannica and chucked it at the opposing wall. As it slid to the ground the pages made a very delicate and interesting curl. I had seen pictures of other artists who had taken books and twisted and carved at the pages to make interesting wave patterns. I took inspiration and began tearing the pages out and curling them. The shapes and lines of the type were endlessly attractive and from there I built one loop on top of another. Fastened to a wooden rod the pages hung, reminiscent of water droplets.

            The project is not finished, to be honest. The form is lacking all of it’s body and the flow of the piece is not completely controlled. However, from what there is, the shapes, depth and interaction of all of the separate parts of this larger sculpture give an interesting feeling. There is a juxtaposition of hanging squared lines and weighted curved droplets that makes the sculpture almost whimsical.

            I can’t say that I’m incredibly proud of it. There was very little preparation and the inspiration was rash and almost ill-advised. I like the idea of what I wanted to do but the presentation of the idea left something to be desired. As I looked at it I nit-picked each flaw that I saw and attempted to remedy it with more paper loops. That caused the whole thing to become a little overwhelming and messy. I also feel that, given more time and a little more care, the project will turn out to be alright. It’s just not done yet.

            I know that my piece is not quite finished because when I look at it I imagine more and I can visualize more dimension and movement. Now, technically, all art work is a continual state of creation but there is an evident sense of incompletion. I want to add more volume in a couple places and include strips of paper that hang from the bottoms and edges in order to give the downward pulling motion a little more delicacy.

            Basically, I’m gonna finish it soon, but what I have now is pretty chill.

Art is creativity on display. Art can show you the mental working of the artist, and their way of expression. Art can be in multiple forms, such as performance, written, or hand designed. That is why art is individual and unique. No peace of art is the same as another.

I chose to start from scratch, literally. I took newspaper and recycled it into canvas. This process consisted of turning twelve newspapers into strips, then using a blender and some water turning the strips into pulp. After the put was made, I used a picture frame and a thin cloth to fish out the paper and strain it. Once the pulp was strained it needed to dry, so it was placed between two towels and I used a rolling pin to squeeze the water out.

            In art class, we’ve been talking about how much plastic we use that isn’t recycled and how much plastic animals and humans eat. This made me think about how much paper fish must eat, seeing as paper is used more if not equally as much as plastic. Just simply walking on the street, I have seen newspapers, candy wrappers and other things on the ground and near the sewers.

            I decided to do a seascape. I decided to use a seascape because our oceans are affected severely.  I cut patterns from magazines into fish shapes, all different shapes and sizes. I decided to use magazine cut-outs to symbolize the paper that makes its way to the ocean, I cut the cut-outs into fish shapes to show that the fish consume what makes its way into the ocean. I cut them into all shapes and sizes to show that just as we are different so are fish; they have an identity just as we do.

            I usually don’t paint because I do not believe I am very good at it, but in this particular project I decided to paint to add a texture and opaque color to the newspaper. In health class, we were cutting images out of magazines to make a collage about ourselves. I decided to use an old Vogue magazine for my fish seeing as there is a lot of unique and creative patterns designers use in their clothing lines. I figured this could show so individuality in the fish I cut out. I also used newspaper print in a few of the fish to show that paper makes its way into the ocean.

11/5/10

Art – D²

I have always been interested in the art that is in our natural world. I have always looked at the environment around me and seen a piece of art. Right after I would get home from a long ride, I would run directly to my room to sketch that red and brown tree that I saw on my way, releasing withering leaves onto the front window of my dad’s small and beat up Toyota.  I would always enjoy drawing small doodles on the sides of my paper whenever I was in class. I enjoyed the magical feeling of getting paint on my hands and clothes. I would enjoy the black spots that my pencil tip would leave on my index finger after an hour of vehement shading under the shade of the gates shielding my backyards. I have always loved the feeling of being an artist because with this new title came the right of depicting the world the way that I see it with paints, pencil, or even clay. This is why I am an artist.

In our art class, we are collecting bottle caps in order to make bottle cap art. Our teacher, Ms. Hull, was inspired to do this by Aurora Robson who builds sculptured out of blown bottle caps. To mold the bottle caps, Aurora goes through a process of melting the bottle caps and then blowing them up, like glass blowers blows up glass. What is cool is that not only does Aurora use bottle caps to create art, but she also uses bottles and other recyclable material.

Aurora holds a pretty deep message with the art pieces that she creates; she is trying to raise awareness of how important it is for us, Americans, to recycle. This is why she uses only recyclable materials to build her sculptures and art pieces. She uses bottle caps in her sculpture because, although bottles are recyclable, bottle caps are not, so she uses them on her sculptures in order to reuse them in a way that will bring out their beauty and value. She does not use spray glue because of the contamination that it might add to the gases in the air and she makes sure to make all of her artistic processes eco-friendly. Currently Aurora Robson is working on an art piece that was in fact inspired by a recurring nightmare she used to have as a child. She explained in an interview that, she would frequently dream about being in a dark place surrounded by colorful blobs that were the size of huge buildings compared to her size. She decided to build a life-size mural of her dreams using bottle caps and bottles. She wanted to make a different representation of her dream. She wanted to turn something that was originally scary and unknown into something cool and beautiful.

Recently, in our art class, we were assigned a task to create a piece of art made out of recyclable material. This assignment was made to mirror the importance of recycling and the value that recyclable material can have. As soon as I received this task, I started thinking of a million different ways that I could go about this assignment. My first idea was papier-mâché a basketball. After this I was going to pain the ball with blue paint and then I was going to make the continents out of scrunched up newspaper (to show a sort of topography on the “pieces of land”). I was gong to later paint the “land” brown. Eventually I thought about cardboard boxes. I was reminded of a fish tank. After this, I started planning out what I would place inside of the fish tank. I thought about using newspaper to build my huge fish and using play sand to form my base. I was going to use plastic wrap to form my water in the background.

At the end, I used a cardboard box to make my fish tank. I cut out the frame, then I painted it a dark grey. Inside, I placed its sand. At the back, I attached its water, which I created on a separate frame. I then wanted to make my fish out of bottle tops, in order to make a stronger statement. In the end, I ended up with a pretty sturdy fish tank. I am thinking of using a more adhesive glue, because the paint that I used before is pealing off. Other than that, my project cam out better than expected.

With this fish tank, I was trying to show how important it is to collect bottle tops. My fish tank represent a fish haven, but the fishes inside the tank are made out of bottle tops. This represents the many fish that have died because of the caps they have ingested. These bottle caps are tossed in the trash, which eventually gets tossed into a body of water. This is where fish wind up eating these un-recycled bottle tops, causing them to die, because of our negligence to collect bottle caps and reuse them. This is what my fish tank represents. I call it “Fish haven”.

I do the work I do because I just simply like it. I get the assignment and own the requirements. What I mean by that is that I sort of take the black and white requirements and color them in my favorite colors. The requirements are still there, you just see my likings all over them. My goal was always to try and help as much as I can to clean up the world and stop trashing it and harming the animals.

The way I make decisions when it comes to my work is pretty simple. I just do what I like. I always have my own idea of things so I take that idea out of my head and into the art. I select materials by determining the difficulty of working with them and if it will open eyes. I do this because I don’t want my art to be something everybody has been before. I want my art to be unique so I take risks and use odd things. I chose to sew the bag by hand because I wanted to feel like a sewing machine. Usually people just take the easy way out and use a sewing machine. I wanted to see what the sewing machine went through even though it is an inanimate object. It still uses up energy and part of my inspiration for this bag was saving resources and energy and keeping the ocean clean because these Caprisun pouches end up right in the water or just on the floor somewhere.

My current work, stated before, is a handbag made entirely out of Caprisun juice pouches. I never thought of where these Caprisun pouches went when they are thrown away until I was given this assignment. I was looking up ideas for my project while I was drinking a Caprisun. Then I looked up a Caprisun bag and there it was. I went home and started thinking more of where the pouches go and it drove me deeper and made me more interested in making this bag. Also, I am a bit interested in the fashion world so it just made it all the more exciting. I was going to get a sewing machine but I figured it would defeat the purpose of babying the world and not harming it anymore. I am attempting to make recycled art fashionable. I may even start making accessories and clothes out of recycled things.

            Crocheting has been a hobby of mine since I was six years old. My great-great aunt Stella taught me how to do simple stitches. After I mastered the basics, I moved on to patterns and she showed me how to follow them and how to make my stitches tighter. After I got more and more practice, I became better at making my rows even and my stitches neat and tight. My goal was to make beautiful doilies and table clothes like my great-great aunt Stella made using thin, fine thread.  I’m not quit there yet but I will someday learn.

            I am in the middle of constructing a patch quilt afghan. I had to decide if I wanted to make this afghan a solid color or multicolored. I chose multicolored because I saw that I could make different patterns throughout the afghan by using different stitches that could only be noticed if I used different colored yarn. I am switching up the pattern every time I switch a color. I am either crocheting stitches that go, single, treble, single, or single, double, single. Both patterns I am using follow a A B A B pattern which means after making a row that consists of treble, single, treble or double, single, double, the next row I crochet will only consist of the single crochet stitch. I chose to make these patterns because when I am done the afghan, these different stitches are going to be very noticeable and it will look very neat. Using these stitches will also make the afghan thicker, therefore warmer.

            When I crochet, I feel like I am spending my time wisely because I am getting a task accomplished, even if I am sitting on the bus going to school. It is achieving a goal and keeping me occupied anytime I just have time to sit down and relax.

            Crocheting has been a hobby of mine since I was six years old. My great-great aunt Stella taught me how to do simple stitches. After I mastered the basics, I moved on to patterns and she showed me how to follow them and how to make my stitches tighter. After I got more and more practice, I became better at making my rows even and my stitches neat and tight. My goal was to make beautiful doilies and table clothes like my great-great aunt Stella made using thin, fine thread.  I’m not quit there yet but I will someday learn.

            I am in the middle of constructing a patch quilt afghan. I had to decide if I wanted to make this afghan a solid color or multicolored. I chose multicolored because I saw that I could make different patterns throughout the afghan by using different stitches that could only be noticed if I used different colored yarn. I am switching up the pattern every time I switch a color. I am either crocheting stitches that go, single, treble, single, or single, double, single. Both patterns I am using follow a A B A B pattern which means after making a row that consists of treble, single, treble or double, single, double, the next row I crochet will only consist of the single crochet stitch. I chose to make these patterns because when I am done the afghan, these different stitches are going to be very noticeable and it will look very neat. Using these stitches will also make the afghan thicker, therefore warmer.

            When I crochet, I feel like I am spending my time wisely because I am getting a task accomplished, even if I am sitting on the bus going to school. It is achieving a goal and keeping me occupied anytime I just have time to sit down and relax.

November 5, 2010

Artist Statement

There are situations in this world that people are not aware of. The affect of plastic bottle caps in our environments is one of them. For this art project art was just a way to raise awareness in this situation.

I do this art because it is one of the most compelling ways to communicate you expressions or situations to people. Even if you feel as though you aren’t the best artist, there shouldn’t be a reason that you are afraid to show people how you feel. Art is a creative way out of stress or anger. There might be times when people judge your creativity but it isn’t your job to focus on the negativity. Let them observe your work. I don’t think there is something called constructive criticism towards artwork because it’s how you feel.  Even people who don’t have an admiration for art can be affected positively by it. I wouldn’t doubt that it happens everyday.

This bottle cap project that we have done in art class has exposed to me how badly the world is negatively affected because bottle caps aren’t being recycled. After realizing the how bad are environments are being affected by this, I have made a more conscious effort to play my art in recycling bottle caps. It’s very evident by how we all could make a difference if we pay attention to what’s happening around us. There are so many ways that students in school illustrated the plastic bottle cap effect. There were many creative projects made out of bottles caps and other types of plastic.

Instead of recycling, people do things like throw there not only plastic by all of their trash anywhere such as oceans or even on our own street. In art class I was able to see how badly plastic has ruined animal species in the ocean. Sea animals such as fish eat the plastic that we throw in the ocean. Without even caring about what these fish have consumed, we catch these fish and eat them ourselves. Now we have plastic in our bodies and no one even notices. Other animals also eat the plastic and they end up dying from the lasting effect from having plastic in them or they suffocate from plastic such as bags.

            My project was a poster trying to communicate with the school community to recycle their plastic. I really wasn’t looking for people to be wowed by what they saw in my project. I believe that there are very creative projects that people have made but their projects do not speak to people in terms of motivating them to make an actual change. I started off pretty ruff doing this project because I was so focused on how I could wow people and make them want to look at my poster first. Being as though I am not always that fond of my artwork, it was hard for me to except a project that I didn’t think was 100% perfect when it came to design. The poster that I have now was not the on that intended of showing but because of some difficult I had to make an entire new poster. I hope that my poster is worth a look and it makes people want make a difference.

When I was younger art used to be apart of my everyday life. I used to have a wild imagination of characters and future worlds so I constantly sketched them while in school or in the car with my mom. My earliest drawings were sketches cartoon movie posters ie: Space Jam , Toy Story , and The Lion King. I always began drawing by just looking at the picture and draw whatever I can. I didn’t notice until years later that my drawings were pretty advanced compared to a lot of kids I knew around my age at the time.

 I tried to farther my art skills in 3^rd grade when I signed up for sculpting classes at the Free Library in Germantown. When I was younger Play-Doh used to be my most enjoying activity. I enjoyed making people and cars specifically out of play-Doh , so I think taking the sculpting class at the library was something that I had a passion for. After a year in sculpting class my passion for art wasn’t the same as before. I some how stopped sketching and drawing suddenly and I didn’t notice that I’d stop drawing until my 9^th grade art class at Science Leadership Academy when we had to sketch a portion of our hallway. 

When I was sketching the hallway my passion for art began to grow rapidly because I was reminiscing about the times when I was younger and all I wanted to do was draw in class. As much as I love art now , I was never a fan of painting. Painting in my opinion is one of the hardest methods to perform in art because it all depends on the brush strokes. I think if the brush strokes aren’t precise then it can ruin the entire drawing. So in any of my art I would never paint or color it , I’d normally just leave it and outline specific details with a dark pencil. 

My favorite material to use in art is modeling clay. Most of my drawings in my younger years were characters that I’d created and being able to sculpt them allows the characters to come to life. I’ve never specifically used a tool in art besides a pencil and my hands, but between the two my favorite tool to use in art are my hands. I can honestly use my hands to do just about anything from painting if I have to, to making precision lines on a sculpture, and adding distinct details to my art. In my 12^th grade year at Science Leadership Academy , this is my second year having an art class since 9^th grade so I was excited to see what has changed over the span of 2 years. Our first project was to create a poster advertising the collection of bottle caps. The bottle caps collected will be recycled because if they aren’t , they’ll possibly end up in rivers and/or oceans which can harm the environment of sea orchids. Since the theme of this specific project was partly recycling, I immediately thought “Go Green” or Saving the p trees. So I decided to cut green construction paper and align it at the bottom of my poster to have the appearance of grass. I followed the grass with a large sun flower rising from the grass with a bottle cap replacing the Anther of the sunflower. I sort of used figurative language in this aspect or figurative art because bee’s take the nectar from the Anther and recycle it to another flower. So instead of recycling the nectar, they can recycle a bottle cap. I created a sun to add more vibrant colors to my poster and the sun was made of orange and yellow bottle caps. I made the sun out of bottle caps because the Sun’s Solar Energy is often recycled and converted to power electrons. So recycling the bottle caps is a symbol of the Sun’s recycling solar energy.  Previously said I chose the colors orange and yellow because they made the poster more vibrant. When constructing a piece of art I always think about the color of the paper or background because I want everything to blend together neatly. 

My favorite colors to use together are burnt orange , brown , and a neutral orange color. For our next project we had to create virtually anything out of recycled material or something that represents the method of recycling. My idea for this project was to sculpt a large sized tree surrounded by the city of Philadelphia, which will be made out of boxes and Styrofoam.  The city is going to be placed in front of the tree and in back of the tree I’m going to create the Franklin Institute. There is no specific reason why I’m going to create the Franklin Institute but it’s only because I wanted to involve our school in my project some how and the shape of the Franklin Institute is easily recognized. I’m then going to wrap a vine around the tree and it’ll connect to the city. This will symbolize that going green can power the city , and to make this more notable I was thinking of placing small light bulbs and batteries inside of the buildings so they can illuminate. 

I’m very excited that art is apart of my school life again twice a week because it allows me to be creative outside of the technology, which is the basis of our school learning.

My Bottle Cap Poster: Recycle Your Caps!

Trying to sculpt the centerpiece which is my tree. The modeling clay was so thick that I had to cut through it with a steak knife. 

The several buildings.The last two are painted cardboard boxes.The first one hasn't been painted yet.

Painting one of the several buildings out of recycled milk boxes.

The photo below is a picture of the vine I made out of clay. I used the classic rolling method until the clay grew longer and resembled a straw. Then I painted it with dark green Crayola paint. As said before the tree that will be sculpted will be wrapped with a vine made of modeling clay. The green vine will look as if it's powering the city which signifies going green.The clay was still soft while taking this picture so I can wrap it around the try I was sculpting. 

Sketch of final product. This is what my final will resemble with the Franklin Institute in the back , a tree in the middle, and the city of Philadelphia surrounding the sculptures. The image above was photoshopped. 

Trial and Error:

Originally I wanted make my tree by wrapping clay around a shampoo bottle and stick tree branches around them. However after a day or so the clay which was hardened broke apart. So that's when I decided to make the tree from 100% modeling clay.Below is a picture of the shampoo bottle after the clay has fallen apart. They white particles on the bottle are pieces of clay that were stuck. 

Before using the recycled cardboard boxes I wanted to use bottles as the buildings.But later I realized how dull it looked because the buildings in Philadelphia are all different, sousing bottles was out of the picture.

Artist Statement

The work that I do is to challenge myself. I mostly dive into projects headfirst and gradually discover what I am capable of. My attitude towards my art is similar to my personality. I am impulsive and as a result things either work out- or they don’t. Moreover, I am not scared to ask for help or to explore different aspects of art.

I make decisions based on beauty and sensibility. I am not the most experienced artist, so there is no ‘one’ technique I tend to sway towards. I use what I can to get the deed done. If I know I want to paint, I use paint and a brush; there is no need to complicate things.

Through this project, I wanted to demonstrate originality and act on inspiration. Although my work is nowhere near spectacular as Colleen Moore’s fairy castle, the thought of creating a dollhouse out of recyclables was pleasing. Trying to restrict my materials was challenging. I made the dollhouse furniture out of recyclable materials such as packaging bubble wrap, cardboard, and old gift-wrap and paper. Furthermore, I experimented with architecture throughout this project. I found it challenging to find ways to hold the dollhouse structure stable.

.:Artist Statement:.

In our senior art class, we were exploring the topic of recycling and the environment, primarily focusing our attention on bottle caps. For my project I choose to make flowers out of bottle caps. Unlike plastic bottle caps, beer-bottle caps can be recycled. Beer-bottle caps are made from steel, as evidenced by their attraction to magnets, and steel is a recyclable material. I wanted to make flowers out of the bottle caps, because quite frankly I think real flowers are a waste of money-they’re beautiful for about a week and then they die. So this bottle cap flowers last for as long as you want. You won’t feel bad about throwing them out either because they can be recycled. My dad helped me with the cutting and flattening of the bottle caps, because he didn't want me working with power tools...but I glued and tied the red bottle caps on the big flower and the medium one.

The pictures above are the less flattering pictures that I first took of my art project. When I started to get such good feedback and complements on the pictures from my classmates and Mrs. Hull, I decided that I should take an individual picture of each flower, since they're all different.
I picked a black background, because I've always loved photographs like that. I think that when the background is black, and there is a flash on the camera the it brings out the subject in a really pretty way.