Project 4- Public Art

This piece went the smoothest out of any of the other assignments, though it took a long time to come up with the idea itself. When I was having trouble thinking of something, I just started thinking about public art in relation to our campus and of course you have to think of Willie Cole's pixels. One of the things that always stood about those who are opposed to the pixels is the statement "They should have made a fountain or a statue." So right then, I realized I had to comment on that statement.

The piece is titled "Happy Now?" and it is what it seems to be; an extremely gaudy representation of a fountain. I taped a looping fountain for 2 hours and played it on a gold tv, though a gold vcr, on a gold and marble stand, with some ornamental molding on top. I wanted to make a point about how incredibly tacky a fountain is, and how we don't need another one. I wanted it to poke fun at those who think that a fountain is "public art." I think my point comes across failrly clear. One thing I learned about this project: Velcro is the best.

Project 3- Time and Motion

View from inside

View of outside


Inside

The blue water that dripped from the top bucket to the bottom

Inside

This project is the most personal project I have ever done. It really took me into deep thought about the subject matter, and I developed a real connection to it. When I was assigned the project "Time and Motion" my immediate thought was to use sand. I was going to have two buckets, one suspended filled with sand, drill a hole in the bottom of it, and have it spill like an hour glass into the bucket below. Over that I was going to project a video. Later, when working with the sand and the buckets I realized that the sand a)was too thick and b)needed a funnel system to keep it flowing consistantly. So, I abandoned the idea and almost immediate idea of using water.

The water became a better idea insantaniously. Not only did it work better physically, but the metaphorical meaning behind is was stronger. So I started to string a bunch of ideas together. The main idea is stuggling to deal with the passage of time. How you spend your whole life collecting memories, wishing them to never go away, but in the back of your mind you know that it's inevitable. I tried to portray this by having the water dripping, simulating the passing of time, and making an obnoxious sound into another bucket. I placed a microphone hooked up to an amplifier up to the bucket to make the sound that much louder and more dramatic. These were all set up in a space that I created using painters plastic. I created a room inside a room, and projected a collage of videos over. The videos contained a combination on my family videos, my parents family videos, and random time basd occurances. I wanted the viewer to watch the video, almost being sucked into the loving memories, but become distracted all the while by the constant reminder of the water dripping.

I also dyed the water blue in case you walked into the space to look at it. I wanted to play with another idea and give the water a sort of double meaning. Lately, me and my friends have been discussing the idea of where you go when you die, and many don't believe we go anywhere. "We're all just drops in the ocean." That's kind of what I was playing with there. When one bucket becomes empty, another becomes filled.

In this project I played with many different ideas that have been swimming in my head. Personally I think they all came together and complemented eachother well.

Project 2- One Corner, One Light

Falling Down
Where it ended up.

The first thing I have to say about this project is how long it took. I have never spent that much time on a project in my entire life. Between cutting up each individual square in Photoshop (which I later found out from someone that there was a program that could have done that for me), laying it all out, taping each column together, and then hanging, I spent 40+ hours. With that being said, the vague assignment of "One corner, One light" really gave me a lot to think about and this is what I came up with.

My whole idea was to bring my street corner at home and put it in the installation room. The enlarged image is in fact the view from where I would stand in front of my house looking out to JFK Blvd. I also thought it would be funny to put a corner on a corner and really mess with perspective and the depth of the space. But mainly I just wanted to re contextualize my corner. The light source is the police light hanging from above. The way it was viewed was with all of the lights off, and that being the only light so your eyes had to get used to the light and little by little you would start to make out an image on the wall and the garbage on the floor. The garbage on the floor really was to make the 2D image turn into a 3D installation, and feel more realistic. The police light simply represents the many sirens that drive down the Blvd. at night, sometimes just to kick us off the corner. I really had a good time with this project, I just wish I could have kept it up sooner. It was a real bummer to have to rip it down so quick.

Project I-Plaster/Repition

Alginate

Before Cleanup

After Cleanup

The plaster project was a great start to the semester. Not only was I doing something that I had no experience, but we had to do multiple copies of it. Sounds like a blast. The practice project before this was the apple, which was a disaster, and set me up perfectly for the real challenge. So what I did was I cast different hands holding these toy guns. I used my own hand, and a few other friends.

The whole thought behind this piece was brought about when a kid from my town was shot and killed going home from a party only a week or two before. He was being robbed along with two of his friends and the scenario went too far. This was a kid that I had been in contact with here and there, and was really close with some of my close friends so it hit home. My whole idea was, when did we as kids stop playing with toy guns, and start playing with real ones? That's why I used the toy guns, and spray painted them jet black so they appeared to be real. As kids we would spend hours running up and down the block pretending we had real guns, and I just wanted to go back to that time when it was simpler. I also chose six guns and six hands because I displayed them in a circle, referring to the six bullets in a six shooter revolver.

This project really tested my patience and determination, but I'm happy with the outcome. The biggest pain was scraping all the alginate out of the inside of the hands. That itself took 10+ hours.