Throughout the course of my last semester in my undergraduate studies, my advanced sculpture course was gearing towards making public art. Art, In the public. This concept should be normal for most if not all of us, but from what I learned, the steps to getting to have public art can be pretty long. My professor always mentions how each of our class mates and people that utilize the arts building frequently see our work, but not the wide array of people that are on campus that do not enter the arts building. This was where the idea to make the connection with the library came into play since libraries (now) are taking the interest in having arts for their spaces. It was a long process to get here definitely because of the various learning curves I had to attain, but I really appreciate learning the many skills I now have. Below is a little "timeline" that I am not afraid to say I did not fully adhere to. This process was a great learning experience that you had to work out kinks along the way. Estimating the time of completion for each step of a work that has not even begun yet is all a part of the process for proposal planning that you can read about here. My most favorite part about this is learning about yourself when making anything. You learn how good your time management is or is not, how well you work under pressure, and even how quickly you get fatigued. These are very important factors to think about when thinking about undertaking a large task because if you know about them, then you can plan accordingly! Timeline/Notes from the day's work. 3/19: Locations Locations Locations This week, we took a tour of the library to see what sites we had available to pitch our proposal for. This library proposal, which you can learn about in an abridged version here, is the last portion of our semesters' series of work. Essentially, we will be choosing a location, creating a proposal packet and presentation to present our ideas to the library staff, art curator, and the art handler of the library. 3/22: Wracking my Brain to Understand WHAT I am thinking Pardon the handwriting, but I for understanding this third part of my series I went back to my roots. What have I done on paper that I could translate to 3D? I also got some ideas from my apartment complexes' clubhouse and stained glass windows from a catholic church (not pictured). What is more is that I decided to continue with the ideas I had in my 2.0. They need to be revamped for the library space though. 4/1: PROPOSAL DAY I was sweating bricks. 1 because I was super sick the night before, and 2 from just presenting my art in front of individuals that were not my peers, professor, or family. Scary. I thought it went well. There is always room for improvement, but it was not as scary as I thought it would be. S/n: The stamp tool is my new favorite tool. Why have I never known how to use it until now? 4/3: Time to Get Started (on actually piecing it together) It was a work day like we have had before. I needed to do more measurements in the library and on a the wooden board that would be my base for the triangular unit trellis. 4/17: Little Surface area, Long hours. Persevere, persevere, persevere! 5/1: D-rings are so great. Now Im learning how to mount and flesh my boards to the wall.
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This is a very important skill to have you goals to have your work out in the public one day. I was very afraid of this concept, because I believed my skills were not up to par to being in such a grandeur light. Even so, I thought this experience was it only practice, but a good confidence booster. No, I am not earning a B.A or B.F.A. but for someone who is a minor, I think I am really lucky to have such an opportunity in case I want to try it one day. I a not going to lie, this process IS tough if you do not have guidelines, or a professional critiquing you on the 'goods' and the 'things you should work on', but luckily I had both. The first guide book we were steered to peruse was Jackie Battenfield's The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love. I am not a getting paid to say any of this, but I do believe this is a nice resource to have if you are an artist and you want to make money doing what you love. Being an artist is not my first profession of choice, but if I, a layman, can understand the broken down rhetoric of the book, I believe that is of some importance. Alongside the knowledge of the book, I had my professor Leticia Bajuyo talk to us about how to organize and practice presenting what we wanted to say to the panel. The combination of those two ideals led to an order of:
It's a lot right? Yes, but If you tackle each part very carefully, other parts will fall into place. I would suggest to start with the artist statement. Then look at the work you want to propose. Are there any correlations to your older works? Has this work in question been exposed to the public already? What was the audience reaction? Do you know how to superimpose images—I did, but my work had a lot of holes in it and I got really lazy.. but they still got the idea. Finally, there was the suggestion to write the cover letter last. You are pulling together all this knowledge of your craft, past works, audience reactions, what you personally stand for into one, abstract-like' document. It will be a nice summary when you are done. Then you can let out your sigh of relief. Final Tips *Do a few practice presentation to work out the kinks of what you will say so you won't get tongue tied * Print out Color Hard Copies for all panelist (judges?) that will be reviewing your work. *Introduce yourself, at the start of your presentation with your first and last name. They might have forgotten already. This is very abridged version of how to prepare for such proposals! Get help from multiple sources! Good luck to you all! Christine :) This was another interesting show I attended in the month of May. The Faculty and Staff Art Exhibition offered an interesting, set of images, creations, and arrangements of objects that one could enjoy. Though the pieces were present for us to enjoy, the more interesting feat to recognize about this is that these artist have the time as workers of the university. Handling any amount of work be that of a student, professor and staff member can be quite taxing because you're keeping yourself afloat, your teaching style or even the services of the university afloat. I appreciate the time taken to create such works of art. It kind of serves as a reminder for me that in the future there is always a way to make time for the other passions you have in your life. With respect to the pieces that blew my mind, the couple that comes to mind are "Room Fan's First Recital" by Ed Warga and "Big Bang" by Trent Thigpen. The first one was because of the composition he made. It allows for the visual to create sound and it personified inanimate objects by the utilizing the term "recital". I thought that was pretty witty. As for Big Bang, the composition again was amazing because it followed the idea of what the big bang was all about. And it did so by using red dead fire ants! As I got closer, I realized the material he used was vaguely familiar and and they were in fact fire ants when I checked the name card. With the personal connection to the ants as a medium, he says it creates an awareness of one of the many systems we have in the universe. I really appreciate attending art events as much as possible because you get to see how other people think about things and what processes go into producing their bodies of work. By attending more of these I hope to ascertain my own style in the realm of artistry that I can rely on when I have free time. Like I mentioned in my last post, my Maymester course has long hours. This is why this post is coming at you in the start of my second week! It's a little late, but that extra time gave me some time to reflect on what I have been learning. Firstly, I essentially had to learn how to deal with clay all over again because the last time I dabbled in any clay work was when I was in elementary. This was the only reason I remembered how to score and slip. Though this was my, what I am considering my first, class in ceramics, my professor and classmates really helped the few of us out that were new to ceramics. I really appreciated it because of their excitement to witness our advancements in our skill. Our first week was to make, and make, and make some more with wet clay because the following, final, week would be for glazing and firing our Raku creations. Our first project was to make pinch pots. It was a super neat process but as a disclaimer, your hands WILL get tired if you are not used to the constant motion. Mine sure did, but with more practice and handiwork with the clay, you find techniques to combat the muscle fatigue. I did so by switching hands and leaning the clay up against the work table. Later on, we viewed some more demos on how to create pieces using slabs, coiled clay, handles, and throwing and pulling. It was a lot of information in the hours we had to work, but since I am able to write about it, at least some of it has been ingrained in my mind for my future with works related to ceramics. I am excited to see where my work will go in the next week, I hope it will be works that I am very proud to start from. Below are some images from the first week of class! Enjoy! For those of you wondering what a Maymester is, it is as it sounds— a semester of school in the month of May. Another interesting thing to note about Maymesters is that they only last two weeks. How can you get anything done in only two weeks? Well the thing is, you CAN. With long hours and dedication to learning new techniques, tricks and tips, It was totally possible! Now that you know what a Maymester is, of course since I am mentioning it on this website, it has to do with something art related. I took the Intermediate Ceramics class my school has to offer. This was my first college level ceramics class so I had a lot of catching up to do in terms of how to manipulate the Raku clay, but It was great learning experience. The coming posts will talk more about the processes I learned and a little bit about my idea conception. Please look forward to it!
"...it's not the money you make, it's the money you hold on to" (121).
Because of how the way the world works, preparing for the future and later generations is something we have to start now. It is relative because money is something that can fuel our lives, and our passions. I have taken this to heart and learned how to save and not let the money flow out too quickly. My earnings are due to hard work that have been put forth so I want to keep it for very necessary and purposeful things in my life. "The way to get over a creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself" (137). As hard as this sounds, I really like this idea. Often times I have too many ideas and I find it hard to narrow things down to one idea so I get stuck in a rut. Linking this idea to Phil Hansen's "Embrace the Shake". I want to try this on myself as soon as I get some free time! "If you ask yourself 'What's the best thing that happened today?' It actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn't otherwise think about (130). Positivity is one way that I like to live my life. I had a teacher in high school—well liked— who was very optimistic about life and on the last day of class, we asker her how she is always so happy throughout the trials of life. She responded by saying that she wakes up and decides that she will be happy/positive for the day. She makes a conscious decision to leave out the negatives and move forward with her life. I likened that experience to this quote because the bad things are the things we think about most. It's hard to pick out the good things because we are so clouded by the negatives. I found this quote to be an uplifting exercise I want to try more often. Use Your Hands & Side Projects and Hobbies Are Important"The computer... [isn't] really good for generating ideas" (58).
This idea has me somewhat perplexed. I think this is true for initiating ideas because a blank canvas is so endless to me. Where would you start the figure? What would be the scale and proportion, and, maybe even, what is the best element to start with? While I have that idea, the computer is often a great source of inspiration. In this modern day, we have supercomputers that are a lot smaller than when they first arose. This makes it easier to gain access to a variety of concepts and try to incorporate elements into our own designs. Even so, everyone is different. We must also recognize that the computer can be a great asset to initializing ideas 'Practice productive procrastination" (65). This alliteration—I love it. Outside of the alliteration, the meaning for me gave me value in the types of procrastination I know I do. Generally, I procrastinate via sleeping and cooking, but for me only one of them I would consider productive. I need to eat. Paired with another quote on the same page, "...have a lot of projects going on at once so you can bounce between them", this gave meaning to some of the other things I like to do. Though they are not immediate to what I should be doing, they were immediate at some point in my life. The extra things I like to do have become minimal because of my many "livelihood" time consuming duties. It's interesting to note now that there are types of procrastination. What I have been doing thus far has not been productive, so I hope from now on it will be. "If you have two or three real passions, don't feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Don't discard" (68). I felt this quote with my whole being. I am a person bursting with many different likings, and if I research them and find and interest the interest will keep growing. It'w rather hard for me to narrow down my ideas, but I always thought I could not move forward if I did not narrow them to one. This was my idea with healthcare. I am a pre-professional student, but I really love sports, art and culture studies. Preparing for healthcare took much of my time, so much that I felt disappointed that my other interests were being lost on the back burner. This is why this quote gives me hope. I don't need to conform. I need to integrate and bring my passions with me along down the road. |
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