(more…)

Swing

(more…)

For this assignment I drew inspiration from a fable I remember fondly from my youth, Aesop’s  ‘The Lion and the Mouse’. In this fable, a mouse proves he is more worthy than he appears by chewing a lion free from a rope trap.

http://vimeo.com/52825999

(more…)

Jon Cuba:
(you should look at all his work though)

http://cargocollective.com/joncuba/787484

Louise Bourgeois used knotting in both her two dimensional and three dimensional work

The concept behind my first project was to illustrate in a non literal sense the progression an animal makes from living organism to edible, and the fact that the essential identity of the animal flesh does not change even though the name transforms. The tessellated origami form  was used to convey a sense of structural soundness, essentially creating an atmospheric “world”, a representation of the throat through which the animal, in the form of meat, passes through.

Here are images of the process and the outcome of my experimentation for this assignment. I was really inspired by Richard Sweeney‘s studies on paper folding. There was this certain complexity in areas that somehow expressed simplicity and elegance in its complete form. I thought this came for the repetition of accurate folds that lead for the paper to transform into a very dimensional form. I started from a small piece of paper and created simple folds. From that I tried some complex folds. Then I worked with bigger sheets of paper and created multiple folds. This lead to me create a sculptural piece, which somewhat resembled Sweeney’s works.

Laid out a 22″x30″ white stonehenge paper, cut it into four pieces of quadrangle, and started exploring every possible way to transform it into a sculpture.

The work consists of four steps representing the concept of circulation, inspired by the ideas of “blank slate,” “Karma,” “The Law of Nature,” and so on.

Each step represents a state of circulation. Starting out from a long zigzig torn piece of paper, in a counter clockwise direction, it begins to explore its ways to build itself, grows  gradually, moves onto next level and another, reaches eventually the staring point, and keeps circulating.

Rather than forward progress, I chose to represent a backwards progression. Beautiful gem or stone-like objects decay and fall apart. They spew the earth that they came from and will return to, while maggots aid in the process.

I think for this project, I spent a lot of time thinking about the concept, and maybe not enough time physically creating the piece.  Thinking about progress led me to think about lack of progress, and how people can often have a lot of potential, but then don’t actualize it because of laziness or other problems.  Which led to the garbage can of given up dreams, which is filled with origami stars, scraps of paper, as well as scraps from making the project itself.  I definitely overestimated the sturdiness of my layered Matte Medium membrane, and if I decide to use that technique again, I’d have to use a lot more layers to get the structure I wanted.  So I guess this assignment has been a learning experience and has helped me progress as an artist.