Thursday, 2/23

Last class, we worked on drawing some of the final chairs in 2-point perspective. It was pretty interesting, and seemed a little difficult at first, but my drawings didn't turn out too bad.

One of the chairs I drew was very complex, so I thought it would be pretty difficult to draw, but it was actually a lot easier than it seemed.

-Carly

Class Absence - 2/21

Today was not exactly the best day.

I couldn't complete my chair because the proportions were off. I'm going to have to make a new chair. This time, however, I'll have to either make my seat lower to the ground or just settle with making the side panels shorter. They were tall to the point of being flimsy and unable to work.

So, here I go again. Hopefully I get it right this time.

-Carly

Final Chair Due on Tuesday

So my chair is due next Tuesday. I have a lot of work to do! Class has gotten a bit complicated, especially since I'm dealing with two different papers and two different art projects right now. Phew!

For my final chair, I was thinking of doing something a bit more sturdy, since my original model didn't work out too well. Well, it might translate with cardboard, but I feel that there's still that chance that it will wobble about. I'll post pictures of my original model later.

-Carly

Bright Minds, Beautiful Ideas- Due Feb. 14th

Our paper on the book Bright Minds, Beautiful Ideas is due tomorrow and I'm in the process of editing my paper. The book is a pretty quick read. I finished it within 5 hours. The ideas expressed by the four designers are very fluid and many of their ideas are intertwined, making it a very understandable book.

Speaking of February 14th, tomorrow in BDS, we're making...Valentine cards, I think? Yeah, that should be interesting. Haha, I'm bad with those things.


- Carly

Project 2 - Chair Ideas

So, for project 2, we need to make a chair out of cardboard that sort of relates to a relation we have with someone. I think I said relation one too many times.

Here are some ideas that I came up with. The relationship being between me and my mom. It also includes a word list to describe our relationship a bit (not all that visible, though):

Response - Martin Puryear and Kendal Buster

Response

Martin Puryear and Kendal Buster

Puryear

To me, Puryear's work can be defined as being non-representational. As a non-representational artist, much of his work has no real noticeable form and is left for viewer interpretation. A lot of his pieces rely on geometric form, aside from pieces like “Bask” and “Self”, which appear more organic. His sculpture tends to be very simplistic, though I noticed pieces like “Bower” and “The Charm of Subsistence” that seemed to stand out from the rest. They are more complex works and both have some noticeable form. I am partial to woodwork like this mostly for it's recognizable form and it's complexity. I believe that the pieces that are more thought-provoking tend to be those that are most complex. Some argue that the opposite is the case, but a piece of art that clearly shows some precision not only makes you question the story or intention behind it, but also the building process: how did the artist go about constructing this?

Buster

Buster's work doesn't rely so heavily on various media as Puryear does, but I believe that could prove to be a positive trait. For example, if someone were to show me one of Puryear's latest works without telling me that it was his, I might not have guessed that it was. Buster's work is different. It is more structural, more identifiable. Her choice of media is steel wire and transparent cloth. Like Puryear, much of her work is geometric. At first glance, her work is almost unreal. To me, the transparency of the figures can only be defined as ghostly. This aside, there is a piece called “Double Chalice” that holds a floral type of shape. Being reminiscent of a flower, it gives off a more playful tone. This piece, as with some of her other works, are hollowed chambers that visitors can enter. For this, I believe that the primary difference between Puryear and Buster is that Buster's work is more interactive while Puryear's is not. This is why I believe that Buster is more successful as an artist and designer.

Response to Errol Morris' views on Photography

“Errol Morris on Photography”

         Some people believe that there are “true” and “false” photographs. Director Errol Morris says otherwise. According to him, each photograph is posed; nothing is out of place and nothing is left out. He also relies on the ideas of Sontag and Barthe by saying that a photograph records a particular event.

         What I believed to be a unique point that he made is that no one really knows the true circumstances behind a photograph. The best that anyone can do is try to piece the components of a photo together to discover its meaning. People generally aren't concerned with where the photo was taken, on what day or time, and so on. He gives the example of a woman smiling next to a corpse. Many had assumed that she was the one involved in the crime, and these people questioned no further. In reality, it was a forensic photograph documenting the crime rather than acting as a picture of the crime itself. He ends the video with a rhetorical question. “Aren't you curious about what you're looking at, just a tiny bit?”

         This is an interesting topic because for our collages, each student shoots their photos under different circumstances, but we might not be so concerned with what time of day the photos were taken, at what range, from what angle, the reasoning behind this location choice, etc. During class critique, the students tend to be very thoughtful with their questions and it sheds a lot of light on the choices that the particular photographer made.

Response to "On Photography"

“On Photography”

         Early in the reading, Sontag describes photographs as, “not acting as statements of the world, but as showing the reality of it.” This is why photographs are immortal: they show the world as it was before. Sontag believes, just as I, that the most efficient means of immortalizing an image is through a book. Putting pictures into frames in your living room or on your office desk serve as something more personal, and will only be preserved for as long as the owner wishes.

         As mentioned before, a photograph shows the reality of an event. This is why photographs (at least prior to photo-manipulation) served as evidence or proof of a particular action. Though photography shows the reality of an event, some shots are better than others to show the intention of the event in a more concise fashion. Many photographers would spend days trying to get the perfect shot of, say, a woman's face to show the full extent of the agony or unease she was feeling.

         This project relates to that, somewhat. I believe that taking a wide range of photos, even spontaneously, can be productive, but that the collage needs a sort of uniformity and pattern behind it. 

Response to "Camera Lucinda"

         A photograph does not try to revive something of the past, but rather, serves to document that what we see in the photo once existed. Barthes states that a photograph doesn't serve as a memory or a reconstitution. Instead, it shows the reality of a past state.

         I agree with this, partially. What I do not fully agree with, however, is the idea that a photograph does not act as a memory. Late into the reading, Barthes says that photographs actually block memories. I believe that photographs are one of the greater forms of memorabilia. Perhaps a photograph isn't exactly a memory itself, but I know that they can serve as a device to recall memories. In part, I can agree with Barthes that an abundance of photos can blur a person's memory. If you rely too heavily on memorabilia to aid in recalling memories, you can become victim to forgetfulness once all of these images are gone.

         I believe this applies to our project because in taking multiple images of one object and piecing them together, we create a collage of that image that represents different times of the day, whether the photos be within a minute of each other or an hour. “Make a collage of a person or location that represents space or time.” This is what I now believe to be the ”time” aspect of the project.