Mini Project

For the mini project, I chose wire.  I'd been waiting to use it all year- and it ended up being pretty fun.  This was meant to be a cat.  I didn't really sketch it...  Just went with it.  Hands-on.  My first time using wire.  Surprisingly wasn't as hard as I expected.  I feel like the head I made was great for a first try, but the way it dangles on the makeshift neck is horrible.  If I could change 1 (maybe 2) thing, then I would chose the head/neck combo.  And maybe the whole body.  This project was fun.

Marble Drop

My theme is...  Cats.  I came up with the theme because cats are my favorite animals.  The ideas were things that cats do, like sleep, fight, eat, play, and just sit there.   I think cutting out all the pieces and painting each and every one was the hardest part of making it.  Then glueing all of it together.  The marble travels downwards.  I don't really know how to explain it otherwise.  Yeah, I made the path.  Cut each piece out of cardboard.  If I could change anything (im not finished yet ill edit this later).  I'm most proud of all the stuff I had to do and how it wasn't just three slopes back and forth.

Repetition

I undertook the word repitition as a repeating object, which is why I made a few whistles.  Only half of them work.  So I had been making a pinchpot, and thought about making it into a whistle.  I spent the longest on the turtle whistle (which doesn't work)  and then about one day on all the others.  After looking up a few videos and experimenting, I made whistles.  They're fairly simple to make.  I think I was successful in the fact that at least some of them work.

Pressure

The word "pressure" made me think of the pressure of metamorphosis.  I had planned to make a caterpillar, too, but it didn't work.  I used a photo of a moth as a reference.   The front legs (yes, those are legs) have texture.  (Also, the end of the body has the wings folded over it.)  The one thing I feel like I did successfully was making the front legs, because those are cool and have texture.  If I could change something about this piece, it would be to make more of them... And to make it look less like a piece of poop.

Nature Art

Land art is a time-limited piece of art.  Made out of the land.  It will dissapear over time.  Not designed to be long-lasting, they are supposed to dissapear eventually.  After all, that's usually what theyre made to do.  Unless you use glue .  I didn't use glue.  Just leaves.  And also a spider.  My medium was leaves, and I used a picture of a moth on my hand as a reference.  I chose this piece because it sounded like a good idea.  Also because I love moths.  Expected it to come out a little different, but this is fine too.  I'm proud of it.  Next time I'd probably have more time and more leaves.  Then it might be better.  I was inspired by the fluffy moths I found while I was at the mountain on vacation during the summer.  And red is my favorite color.  So those are the reasons and stuff.  This was rather easy to make. 

Vessel

My idea for a vessel was a snake mug.  You know, with the snake coiled around it, squeezing.  Or something along those lines.  I wanted the snake to be coiled closer with itself, but that didn't work out.  It's still pretty heavy anyways.  The underbelly of the snake was carved out- something I didn't want to do and made it more likely to explode due to my bad craftsmanship.  There were probably a ton of air bubbles, but there were even more holes poked into it.  I really didn't want it to explode.  My medium was red clay, and I wanted to paint the underside with white clay so that it would appear to have a white belly.  That didn't happen and it wouldn't have mattered since it was glazed over with dark blue glaze, blue glaze, and red glaze for the eyes.  My vessel is supposed to hold water, or any liquid deemed nonlethal.  Preferrably liquid that won't harm, in any case.  You want to hear my process?  Well..  First off, I took a great lump of clay.  Flattened that flatter than a pancake.  Cut out a circle, cut a rectangle out.  Rolled up the rectangle into a cylinder and stuck the circle onto the bottom, sticking them together like you would if you dropped a banana onto the floor from 20ft in the air.  The tail was supposed to be the handle, though it doesn't work too well.  Then guess what I got.  Clay.  Rolled it out into a giant noodle or worm.  Then I got more clay.  Rolled that out, too.  Stuck them together.  They still weren't that long.  In the middle of that, somewhere, I crafted the head of the snake onto the end(front) piece.  Ms. Sudkamp thought, rightfully so, that it would be dumb to just keep doing it like that so I had to chop up the snake into itty bitty pieces.  Snake sushi.  Then I carved out the belly -guts- and it was ready to eat.  That snake sure was delicious.  Anyways,  I scored and slipped so much trying to put that snake onto the mug.  More than half of it didn't even get put on.  Wow, that was a waste of time.  Making the parts that didn't go on, that is.  Then I used a sponge or something and tried to smooth it out.  "Tried" being the key phrase there.  After, it got tossed into the kiln and burnt to a crisp.  Then  I glazed it.  Another trip to the clay oven.  That's pretty much it.  I took it home, but I haven't taken a drink from it yet.

Relief in progress

I used clay and cutting tools and carving tools and stuff for my medium.  Clay seemed like a better option for my project than the bookstuff, and so I chose that.  What amazing intelligence.  So, my subject was a bunny in a box.  I thought a bunny would be better to carve and/or easier, but the popping out of the box was a little harder.  With straight edges the box was a little tough to cut but it was done.  I don't know if you expect me to put more than this with four short questions. 

Van Gogh Painting

Sarah Jakubowski
9/21/13
Sudkamp Kimberly, Period 4 Sculpture and Ceramics
Discovered Van Gogh Painting Hiding in Norweigan Attic for a Long Time
    The painting is of some bunch of trees and a river.  Is it popular because it was drawn by Van Gogh?  I don't know yet.  How did they know it was Van Gogh's painting?  Maybe I'll find out as I read.  They call it "absolutely sensational" or a "once in a lifetime experience".  I'm not really one for paintings.  It just looks like a forest that was smeared in some places to me.  This painting had been twice rejected as a Van Gogh painting, once by the Van Gogh museum itself.  This humors me.  The evidence of this being Van Gogh's painting was a letter to his brother, in which he gets all lengthy with his words.  He talked of the amazing sunshine - "absolutely a shower of gold" - and some other stuff that doesn't seem related to this picture.  "The field seems purple, the distances blue" ninety percent of this picture is green.  Was Van Gogh really off his rocker?  "You wouldn't have been at all surprised to see knights and ladies suddenly appear, returning from hunting with hawks, or to hear the voice of an old provençal troubadour."  I have no idea what the last two words mean.  But this seems unlikely, due to the fact that this is a forest, and there is no civilization in sight.  Why would knights be returning to a forest with a hawk?  Not to hunt.  Maybe to store their hawk in some cage which it will probably be found by a bear and devoured.  This will be displayed from September 24th and onwards.  I see what you did, Ms.  Sudkamp.  I see very well now.  Well, not very well.  My sight isn't 6/6.  I think.   Been a while since my last eye checkup thing.  Anyways, I'm very skeptical of this Van Gogh painting.  Not that I'm into what Van Gogh does.  Did he not sign any of his paintings?  How odd.    Resources:  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/09/van-gogh-painting-discovered

Botched Restoration

Sarah Jakubowski
9/3/13
Period 4 Sculpture and Ceramics
    This piece of art used to be Ecce Homo, "Behold the Man".  At least it was, until 81 year old widow Cecilia Giménez painted over it.  Now it is known by Ecce Mono, "Behold the Monkey".  There are a few nicknames for this select piece of art.  I'm not going to list them, though.  The authorities of Borja had claimed to believe it was vandalism at first, even though Cecilia claims she worked on it during the day, in broad daylight, with approval from the local clergy.  The church claims she did not have permission.  I'm not too sure what she thought she could do to it, since she was obviously not too good at art stuff.  Now that it's famous, the people who once thought about inforcing legal charges on her might be thankful instead.  Because of her odd recreation on the painting.  Personally I think it's a funny image.  I also think that this topic is really abstract.  Write what we feel about this piece of art?  A while from now it might be worth some money, but I'd think not.  The church announced that they would hire a professional or pay them to come and fix it up.  Following the press coverage, Cecilia had been reported to be suffering of terrible anxiety attacks and being reluctant to eat and/or leave her house.  A year after, the Misericordia hypothesized that about 57,000 guests and tourists from all over Europe, Latin America, Japan, and China went to see the fresco and among all those dropped somewhere around €50,000 in the collection box.  Just to see this "failed" recreation.  It's getting more profit than it probably would have had it stayed the same as the original.  All in all, wouldn't you say this was a success and not a failure?  Cecilia has not seen penny nor dime of the donations her creation has wrought.  She is working towards a copyright deal over her painting.  Through this(or maybe after), Cecilia said, "I couldn't understand why everyone was talking about me.  I only tried to stop the fresco succumbing to damp, as it so often had."  She wanted 49 percent of the money at the sanctuary to go towards people suffering due to the same degenerative sickness as her biological offspring. 



Citations:  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/so-bad-it-was-brilliant-botched-fresco-restoration-answers-spanish-towns-prayers-with-tourism-boom-8762069.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/world/europe/botched-restoration-of-ecce-homo-fresco-shocks-spain.html?_r=0
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/botched-ecce-homo-painting