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Final critique and remaining clean-up Thursday, April 27th

Esther
Warner
Anna P.
Lydia
Eliana
Sarah

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Final crit and quick clean-up Tuesday, April 25th:

Meredith
Anna G
Rickie
Charissa
Christiana
Alethea

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In lieu of paper handouts, I've consolidated everything you will need over the course of the semester here, including the syllabus, due dates, student examples, project descriptions, and artist examples. Feel free to email me about your grade or any other questions anytime at sarahbethwoods@gmail.com

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Instructables website-this is a great resource containing step-by-step instructions for a wide variety of projects.

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Instructables website-this is a great resource containing step-by-step instructions for a wide variety of projects.

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https://www.instructables.com/Course-Through-a-Kinetic-Sculpture/

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Introduction: Beam: a Kinetic Sculpture

Beam is a kinetic sculpture created at Pier 9, during my Autodesk Artist-in-Residency.

The idea is the spinning mirrors make a single line of light twist and turn in erratic patterns. In all my work I hope to inspire inquiry through perceptual manipulations. The viewer can explore and inspect the piece further by changing perspective to get different secondary, tertiary, etc reflections between mirrors.

I used the Omax waterjet to cut the discs, to make them accurate slices of a cylinder (i.e. ellipses), and the Epilog laser cutter to the make the support structure.

Step 1: Prototype in Digital

Even though I had this idea in my head for a few months, I find it hard to simulate reflections in my head. Anything past a flat, single reflection mirror, and my head explodes. That's why I rely on computers.

Fusion + Maya can both do some decent renderings with ray-tracing. That means, that it will simulate photons moving from the light source and bouncing in the right way throughout the entire model.

If you look through some of the gifs, you can see how I explored this idea in simulation before even building anything. In parallel, I had sketched out a mechanism that could make this seemingly impossible sculpture work.

In one of the gifs, I'm playing with slices of a cylinder (by definition, ellipses) so that the profile of the entire sculpture stays as a cylinder.

In another, I keep the ellipses, but make it regular spacing and angles. Although a little more mesmerizing, this is less interesting to me, because you don't get a chance to explore the piece.

In another, I make the mirrors circles (subtle difference), but it creates a wobbling effect. Although interesting, it is too similar to an exhibit at the Exploratorium, and the effect detracts from the effect I want to highlight - that the line is no longer a line.

Here's a sub-instructable on how to render an animation in Fusion 360 (because it's not obvious).
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Render-an-Animation-in-Fusion-360/

Step 2: Failed Prototype

I had this idea that I could precisely cut clear polycarbonate tube and then sandwich laser-cut acrylic mirror in between the tube sections. This was a silly idea. There are too many degrees of freedom, which means that I had to (1) glue things together and (2) align things by hand. This can never leads to good things.

So that was that. This prototype led me to getting on the waterjet and using the 5-axis head to cut out mirrored acrylic with angled edges.

One cool thing that came from this was a way to cut polycarbonate tube at somewhat precise angles on different planes. I 3D-printed a cap that indexed the tube every 45º. It was press-fit on the end and allowed me to know what plane I was on when I was cutting it with the coldsaw.

Step 3: Struggle With Omax Intelli-CAM™ to Make a Simple Cut

Intelli-cam is a misnomer. It does CAM, some kind of CAM.

Now that I was going to cut things in 5-axis, I had to use software to generate the 5-axis toolpaths. As you can see from the gif, the .omx file that Intell-CAM spit out was an ellipse with a constant bevel around the the ellipse, rather than what my model was telling it to do, which is a constant angle cut. It was doing the inner ellipse correctly, cutting it at a certain angle, but not the exterior cut. (In the photo, the top disc is incorrect, and the bottom one is the correct way it should be cut).

Long story short. I had to modify the .omx directly in a text-editor. Instructable for how that worked here:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Hacking-the-Omx-Files-From-OMAX-Intelli-CAM-for-th/

Step 4: Proof of Concept

After 5-axis cutting ellipses with the waterjet, I bought some bearings, some gears (to drive from a different axis of rotation), and a cheap low-RPM motor off Amazon.

The mirrors are single-sided acrylic mirrors that are then placed back to back. They are cut accurately enough that they slip onto the polycarbonate tube (that is sanded) and stays there due to friction. To avoid using a slip ring, I am spinning the polycarbonate tube (on which the mirrors are attached) while the light stays in place. The tube spins via a gear train connected to a very slow motor. Some pseudo-mechanical-engineering later, the whole thing spins!

Step 5: Neato! But...

As soon as I finished it, it was obvious what to improve:

Motor noise - the motor I got makes a terrible whirring noise. It's a regular DC motor with an internal gear reduction. As was later suggested to me, I should've used a synchronous motor, which uses AC current.

Mirror quality - The back-to-back acrylic mirror makes for some thick (0.25") discs. They are second-surface mirror, so they have a small gap before the reflection actually happens. You can see this at each joint. Time to use first surface mirrors (hella expensive!) or make my own mirrors (hella time-consuming!)

Scale - Right now, it's cool as a table lamp, but for it to be a real Sculpture with a capital S, I need to scale this puppy up.

Return path for wire - the connection to the top of the fluorescent bulb is a wire that hangs to the side. No bueno! Scale might help by making it so tall, I run it to the ceiling, but maybe I can cleverly tuck the wire away.

Some cool things I didn't notice from the renderings

Two 45º mirrors, in parallel, will create a neat staircase infinity, and twisting one of the mirrors will cause it to curve. It's really hard to spot this though, unless you're really looking for it.

The edges of the mirrors get lit up, because the mirrors are acrylic. This should have been predictable, but didn't think about it. It's clear I need to think about it, because it draws a lot of attention.

You can create seemingly closed loops of the light line within the mirrors.

Step 6: Proof of Concept II (scaled Up)

With the goal to create more interesting perspectives to explore, I bought some larger components and cut larger discs to create a model that was scaled up. I also addressed all the previous issues.

I bought a AC motor (aka synchronous motor) to run it at a slower rpm

frosted the tube by hand-sanding it to make it appear as if the discs were directly on the light

tested out a few different mirrored surfaces: (mirrored acrylic, mirrored glass, clear glass, dichroic acrylic)

Biggest issue was that at 8ft tall, the tube holding the mirrors bent enough to make it look not straight (but not enough to topple it over), and the heavier discs slid down the tube. Tolerance was okay, but they needed a dab of glue to stay in place.

The next step is to create another version with better proportions (larger diameter discs), a stiffer tube, and a single material (e.g. glass and black acrylic).

Step 7: Another Iteration

The first of two. I decided to go with two columns: one with black acrylic for the discs, and one with clear glass. The new materials provide the reflective quality I want, but in a much more subtle and surprising way. The proportions have been modified to more closely match the smaller model. The spinning discs create an 18" diameter cylinder, giving more room for the reflections to breathe and allowing for the discs to be more spaced out.

Some improvements: I found an 8ft fluorescent tube from Universal Electric Supply in SF (without having to buy 25 at a time), so there's no break in the middle. And, I also found a way to get a more even frosted finish on the polycarbonate tube: Sandblast a long tube in a small sandblaster.

Step 8: A Variation: Glass Discs

The last challenge was waterjetting glass. It's surprisingly hard to find glass in the Bay Area that isn't ridiculously expensive. I ended up buying a bunch of 3/32" and 1/8" thick replacement window glass from Home Depot. Note: don't trust the number of "in stock" on their online store.

Water-jetting glass was it's own thing. Here's what worked for me: https://www.instructables.com/id/Tips-for-Waterjetting-Glass/

The final pieces are much better than what I envisioned when I created the renderings. Each prototype was successful in that it lead to improvements for the next version. I wouldn't have been able to get to the final model without all the valuable help everyone offered, all of which was spurred by the physical prototypes created.

Step 9: Final Pieces

The two pieces are titled Beam 1 and Beam 2 and was exhibited at the Artists-in-Residence Spring 2016 show at Pier 9, Autodesk in San Francisco.

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Beam: a Kinetic Sculpture: Beam is a kinetic sculpture created at Pier 9, during my Autodesk Artist-in-Residency.The idea is the spinning mirrors make a single line of light twist and turn in erratic patterns. In all my work I hope to inspire inquiry through perceptual manipu...

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Create a work of art using temporary materials that will biodegrade, melt, or disappear over time. Examples could include but are not limited to: dirt, ice, cereal, wax, biodegradable packing peanuts, etc. Choose a well-thought out, indoor or outdoor site specific location for the work to reside. This site should inform the artwork and we should be able to visit it with the work installed during class hours. Due date | critique: Thursday, April 6th.

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The low-fi pollution solution has proven surprisingly effective in the Netherlands. Now, the technology is set to be rolled out elsewhere in Europe

A Dutch startup led by sailors and surfers has devised a way of stopping trash in its tracks - with a little help from bubbles.

The Great Bubble Barrier (GBB) deploys a perforated tube on riverbeds to create a curtain of bubbles which nudges waste to the bank for collection.

And for such a lo-fi method it's proven remarkably effective, snagging plastic particles as small as 1mm and intercepting as much as 86 per cent of flotsam in inland waters before it reaches the sea.

It's a solution that is sorely needed. Every year, more than 8m tonnes of plastic ends up in our oceans, of which 60-80 per cent originates in rivers.

The concept was devised by a team of Dutch ocean lovers in 2019. They came up with a design that catches plastic over a river's full width and depth, and a directs it to a catchment system that collects and compresses the waste.

Last summer, GBB's first bubble barrier was installed in the mouth of the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine) river at Katwijk in mid-western Netherlands after locals expressed dismay at plastic pollution littering the town's beach.

The bubble curtain is created by an air compressor running on renewable electricity, which pumps air to the riverbed tube, laid diagonally across the waterway.The bubbles lift plastics to the surface, and the flow of the river channels waste sideways into a catchment system.

GBB's method operates 24/7, works regardless of water levels, and allows aquatic life and river traffic to pass unhindered. Another bubble barrier has since been deployed in Amsterdam, and two more are planned for Portugal and Germany.

"Rivers are the highway to our oceans, transporting pollution all the way the said Francis Zoet, co-founder of the startup. "Our Amsterdam system is preventing 8,000 pieces of plastic from reaching the North Sea each month. But we don't plan to stop there: the first international systems are on the agenda, and we can't wait to tackle pollution across our borders."
Main image: GBB

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The bubble barrier that stops rubbish before it can reach the sea

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The low-fi pollution solution has proven surprisingly effective in the Netherlands. Now, the technology is set to be rolled out elsewhere in Europe A Dutch startup led by sailors and surfers has devised a way of stopping trash in its tracks - with a little help from bubbles.

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Mended Spiderweb #19 (Laundry Line)
C-print, 20 x 30 inches, 1998

The Mended Spiderweb series

The Mended Spiderweb series came about during a six-week period in June and July in 1998 which I spent on Pörtö. In the forest and around the house where I was living, I searched for broken spiderwebs which I repaired using red sewing thread. All of the patches were made by inserting segments one at a time directly into the web. Sometimes the thread was starched, which made it stiffer and easier to work with. The short threads were held in place by the stickiness of the spider web itself; longer threads were reinforced by dipping the tips into white glue. I fixed the holes in the web until it was fully repaired, or until it could no longer bear the weight of the thread. In the process, I often caused further damage when the tweezers got tangled in the web or when my hands brushed up against it by accident.

The morning after the first patch job, I discovered a pile of red threads lying on the ground below the web. At first I assumed the wind had blown them out; on closer inspection it became clear that the spider had repaired the web to perfect condition using its own methods, throwing the threads out in the process. My repairs were always rejected by the spider and discarded, usually during the course of the night, even in webs which looked abandoned. The larger, more complicated patches where the threads were held together with glue often retained their form after being thrown out, although in a somewhat "wilted" condition without the rest of the web to suspend and stretch them. Each "Rejected Patch" is shown next to the photograph showing the web with the patch as it looked on site.

A video called GIFT/GIFT was part of the suite of works as well.

Mended Spiderweb #14 (Spoon Patch)
Cibachrome, 30 x 20 inches, 1998

Mended Spiderweb #8 (Fish Patch)
Cibachrome, 20 x 20 inches, 1998

Marketing Tips for Spiders
Cibachrome, 30 x 20 inches, 1998

An attempt to teach a spider how to advertise.

Do-it-Yourself Spiderweb Repair Kit
Plastic box with foam and thread, tweezers, scissors and glue, 1998

Next project in Uninvited collaborations with nature | Next project in Photography

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1. Student process video: Orange peel, string

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1. Student process video: Orange peel, string

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Final projects are open ended. You may wish to build on a former project or start something new.

Th. April 6
Gather materials, and plan your project. If it is helpful draw or write it out. Be prepared to share your ideas with me April 11th, or 13th.

Th. April 11

Individual meetings

to discuss final project plans
(**this date has been moved up from the 13th on the paper copy of your syllabus.**)

Tue. April 13

Individual meetings to discuss final project plans

T. April 25
Final critique

Th. April 27

Mandatory clean up day. If we need extra time to finish critiques we can present today. Last day of class, no time slot during finals.

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ART 231 Sculpture I 2023 Wheaton SP edit

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Choose between 10-20 identical objects. They can be objects you create, for example using wire, or air dry clay, or they can be found objects. Assemble them together in an interesting way. Some methods may be similar to the deconstruction project. Please review Sonya Clark's work below (specifically her use of plastic hair combs.) Due date | critique: Thursday, March 2.

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Tom Friedman (b. 1965, Saint Louis, MO) makes extraordinary work that explores ideas of perception, logic, and possibility. His often painstakingly rendered sculptures and works on paper inhabit the grey areas between the ordinary and the monstrous, the infinitesimal and the infinite, the rational and the uncanny. His work is often deceptive, its handmade intricacy masked by a seemingly mass-produced or prefabricated appearance. Friedman's deadpan presentation implies content and form are seamless; expectations are overturned as the viewer slowly perceives that chasm between illusion and reality.

Friedman's work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and museums, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Magasin III Museum and Foundation, Stockholm; South London Gallery; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; and numerous other institutions. His work is included in prestigious collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Contemporary Austin; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Brown University, Providence, RI; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; Art Institute of Chicago; St. Louis Art Museum, among several others. Public commissioned artworks of Friedman's are permanently installed in Austin, TX; Saint Louis, MO; Frisco, TX; and Beverly Hills, CA.

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Tom Friedman makes extraordinary work that explores ideas of perception, logic, and possibility. His often painstakingly rendered sculptures and works on paper inhabit the grey areas between the ordinary and the monstrous, the infinitesimal and the infinite, the rational and the uncanny.

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ART21: How did you develop the idea for Revival Field?

CHIN: It was funny stumbling on the idea. It was in the Whole Earth Review. It was written by a psilocybin expert, Terrence McKenna, who has his own cult following and has written interesting things on ethnobiology. He was writing about the possible cleaning of toxic ground with the plant datura. It was like in the film The Graduate -you know the guy, not Dustin Hoffman-but I was the guy telling Dustin Hoffman, "Plastics, it's plastics, it's the future!" I ran to see my wife (or girlfriend, then) and just told her. I said, "It's plants. The future is plants. The new sculpture is plants." Most of my friends thought I was a little bit insane because: number one, you quit, you had a show, and you're going, your career is starting; and now, you quit, and you're now talking about plants? And I saw the poetic nature of this. I said, "It is a sculpture. It could be a sculpture of carving away."

And put it this way: I say that it's the traditional sculpture that I'm interested in. Michelangelo has his Carrara marble; he has an idea, an image. And he goes with his chisels and he creates David, and we all "Ooh!" and "Ahh!" over it, and whatever we do in front of it. That's it. Now, I'm in a world where I open up the paper; I read these articles. We live in a world of pollution with heavy metals saturating the soil, where there is no solution to that. If that [pollution] could be carved away, and life could return to that soil and then a diverse and ecologically balanced life, then that is a wonderful sculpture. I think there is a profound aesthetic in there, and it's really simple. But we have to create the chisels, and we have to create the tools, and we have to isolate the problem: where the block of pollution is, so we can carve it away. It became very clear to me that it ( Revival Field) would be a sculptural project worth engaging in. And I set upon to finding out more, whether datura could do this-jimsonweed is common.

ART21: Datura is jimsonweed?

CHIN: Yeah. And so, I'd gone through all the conceptual workings of this; now I just needed to take the poetry of this idea and turn it responsibly and pragmatically into reality. I found this landfill expert at Texas A&M, who said, "Well, I have no knowledge of datura ever doing that, but I heard a paper by a guy named Rufus L. Chaney. And he's in Beltsville, Maryland; he's a research scientist who gave a paper about plants and accumulation, and we're talking about hyperaccumulation." Hyperaccumulation is this notion that the plants can suck up so much metal-and we're talking about heavy metals, not everything-that the plant itself was 20 to 40 percent heavy metal when you ashed it. So, you could sell it as an ore and pay for this process. Because it's not just enough to pull it up-you have to think about the whole machinery, a reality.

You have to create a condition for an idea to survive. It's like creating an economy to make it worthwhile to promote. I had to see the big picture of things. If you say, "Okay, this has to be completed after I'm dead," then what do you need to do to make it work? It has to be self-sustaining. It has to prove itself to be self-sustaining. So, I called Dr. Chaney up, and here's Dr. Chaney saying, "Well, datura will get you high, but if you want to suck up heavy metals, you've called the right person." He said, "Everything I'm doing is on the shelf. There is no support within our government at this time (a conservative government at the time) to go into this kind of research. I'm back working on sewage sludge." But his passion was, he said, "this thing I really care about"-clearing heavy metals from soil. And I said, "Well, what if I have this idea, and you have this idea. Let me learn about the science behind it, and maybe we could work together, so we can do what you need." And he said, "What I really need is a replicated field test. If you can do this, then we'll be able to make science, because science is in the lab." We had to make the artwork create the science.

ART21: What is a replicated field?

CHIN: It's going somewhere in the world outside the lab-like throwing a dart on the board-to do an experiment that you did in the lab (that shows that there is heavy metal transfer into a plant), and then go randomly to a hostile climate, in the field, do the planting, and show there's results that match what's in the lab. So, it's replicated by a control. So I felt like, "Why not?" And then the art can mutate into a science project dedicated to providing the world this information, good or bad. And I was already projecting that the physical structure was not important, that, you know, this physical manifestation of the field and all this is also evolutionary-it's a temporary thing. It's more about this field being transformed by the science and living again or creating an idea that survives in the world. So, all this was conceived and understood, and I went about doing the very difficult negotiations, where every day I would be on the phone, borrowing money if I had to, to pay the phone bill, or writing letters or do whatever-doing anything necessary to get this artwork together.

And it's funny, when people are used to seeing you making sculpture or creating drawings, and they come in, and you're on the phone constantly, and they say, "Well, aren't you going to make any art today?" And I would say, "I am making art. This is it." Because I was driven by that and meeting tremendous obstacles that were not just about the science and not just about the art. There were legal obstacles that occurred, where people said, "Well, we don't want to talk about it anyway, because it's about financial responsibilities for the pollution, and we have got to say we didn't do it." So, all these things I learned about the politics. "Why? You know it doesn't make sense," I said, "Why are we living in a ground like Love Canal? Why are we living in areas that are . . . are toxic? And why are people allowed to be there? And why isn't there someone who's responsible?" And obviously there's political corruption where money is just wasted, and there are things that just don't make any sense. I learned that they do make sense in a way that is about the terrible aspects of human nature, and that's the truth.

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ART21: How did you develop the idea for Revival Field? CHIN: It was funny stumbling on the idea. It was in the Whole Earth Review. It was written by a psilocybin expert, Terrence McKenna, who has his own cult following and has written interesting things on ethnobiology.

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Hubert Duprat: Natural materials | strange collaborations

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Hubert Duprat: Natural materials | strange collaborations

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The images above illustrate the results of an unusual artistic collaboration between the French artist Hubert Duprat and a group of caddis fly larvae. A small winged insect belonging to the order Trichoptera and closely related to the butterfly, caddis flies live near streams and ponds and produce aquatic larvae that protect their developing bodies by manufacturing sheaths, or cases, spun from silk and incorporating substances-grains of sand, particles of mineral or plant material, bits of fish bone or crustacean shell-readily available in their benthic ecosystem. The larvae are remarkably adaptable: if other suitable materials are introduced into their environment, they will often incorporate those as well.

Duprat, who was born in 1957, began working with caddis fly larvae in the early 1980s. An avid naturalist since childhood, he was aware of the caddis fly in its role as a favored bait for trout fishermen, but his idea for the project depicted here began, he has said, after observing prospectors panning for gold in the Ariège river in southwestern France. After collecting the larvae from their normal environments, he relocates them to his studio where he gently removes their own natural cases and then places them in aquaria that he fills with alternative materials from which they can begin to recreate their protective sheaths. He began with only gold spangles but has since also added the kinds of semi-precious and precious stones (including turquoise, opals, lapis lazuli, and coral, as well as pearls, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds) seen here. The insects do not always incorporate all the available materials into their case designs, and certain larvae, Duprat notes, seem to have better facility with some materials than with others. Additionally, cases built by one insect and then discarded when it evolves into its fly state are sometimes recovered by other larvae, who may repurpose it by adding to or altering its size and form.

Duprat traces his work with the caddis fly larvae back to pioneering nineteenth-century entomologists such as François-Jules Pictet and Jean-Henri Fabre, who both conducted experiments in which structure-building insects were given alternative, non-indigenous materials. Seen within the context of the artist's work-a practice that has often addressed aspects of mimesis in the realms of both nature and facture through his conceptual sculptural activities-the caddis fly larvae project is an example of Duprat's ongoing interest in productive collisions between organic forms and technologized materials. Yet the work also provokes broader philosophical questions regarding behavior and intent, one that was summarized particularly astutely by the critic and philosopher Christian Besson, in a conversation with the artist conducted in the late 1990s:
Kant's distinction between works of art and those of nature leaves us in a quandary. The production of the artifact within nature herself poses a problem-even more so when an aesthetic aspect is involved. Whether the insect is a craftsperson or whether, more generally, nature is a creator of forms, the consideration, within nature, of an aesthetic dimension is the stumbling block of science. ...
Your activity as an artist, upsetting the ordinary ethology of the insect, seems to me to be the same thing as introducing a noise, complicating its umwelt and producing a response. In your diversion of the caddis worm's behavior, in your artistic manipulation, the effect is twofold. From a biological viewpoint, a random event triggers self-organization. From a human viewpoint, the experimenter's intent produces this effect. ...

Is the caddis worm's precious case the work of the insect or the work of the artist? This is not the right question. The contradiction can be resolved by the differing viewpoints. According to the first view, the caddis worm owed nothing to the artist (who is simply the author of one noise among the thousands of other noises in its environment). According to the second view, the caddis worm is merely the executor of the artist's project. The artistic statement plays on the confusion of the two levels by overlaying the two perspectives. The aesthetic result (at once natural and artistic) turns the caddis worm's case-which is more than an assisted ready-made or a diversion-into a doubly exposed object... ¹
-Jeffrey Kastner

To watch Duprat's larvae in action, click here. (0.9 MB).

See press about this project on mining.com.

Hubert Duprat is an artist living in the south of France. He is currently at work on several public projects that include stained-glass windows, a grotto, and a tunnel. He is also preparing a monograph on Trichopterae. Recent publications include Hubert Duprat Theatrum by Christian Besson (R.M.N, 2002) and Une oeuvre de Hubert Duprat (Editions Muntaner, 2007).
If you've enjoyed the free articles that we offer on our site, please consider subscribing to our nonprofit magazine. You get twelve online issues and unlimited access to all our archives.

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Artist Project / Trichopterae | Hubert Duprat

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The images above illustrate the results of an unusual artistic collaboration between the French artist Hubert Duprat and a group of caddis fly larvae.

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Isa Genzken: Found objects | piles | assemblage

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Isa Genzken: Found objects | piles | assemblage

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Exhibition. November 23, 2013-March 10, 2014. Isa Genzken (German, b. 1948) is arguably one of the most important and influential female artists of the past 30 years. This exhibition, the first comprehensive retrospective of her diverse body of work in an American museum, and the largest to date, encompasses Genzken's work in all mediums over the past 40 years.

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Claes Oldenburg: Store | hand-made multiples

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Claes Oldenburg: Store | hand-made multiples

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https://www.wikiart.org/en/claes-oldenburg/the-store-1961

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Claes Oldenburg. The Store. 1961. Letterpress. composition: 26 9/16 x 20 5/16″ (67.4 x 51.6 cm); sheet: 28 1/4 x 22 1/16″ (71.8 x 56 cm). the artist in cooperation with Green Gallery, New York. Manhattan Press, New York. Mary Ellen Meehan Fund. 56.1999. © 2022 Claes Oldenburg. Drawings and Prints

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Willie Cole is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and perceptual engineer.

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Biodegradable | Temporal work                                          site specific

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Biodegradable | Temporal work                                          site specific

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Andy Goldsworthy Natural Sculptures With Ice, Stone & more | Rivers and Tides | Documentary Central

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Using an old pair of headphones (like really, really old), I initially wanted to make some micro-sculptures using a soldering iron, but there was too much plastic, so I opted to make a dream catcher instead. Typically made from natural materials, my variant highlights the way that we still have dreams and need our safe spaces, even if we've changed our world drastically.

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My original objects are regular soda cans that my family usually just wash out and recycle.

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The colors of the cans reminded me of an iridescent beetle, so I cut apart the cans using a can opener and bone-cutting scissors, then crushed them and shaped them with pliars to make the shape of a stag beetle. It's a bit difficult to see all the legs and details in the photo, but I cut shapes out of the aluminum and layered them up together to imitate the beetle's elytra (shell).

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I found this porcelain doll at a local Goodwill and fell in love with all of the pretty fabric and textures.

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My initial plan was to create something based on the idea of women being fragile and "featherbrained" but it felt like I was trying a bit too hard to derive meaning. In the end, I just had fun finding ways to use the various elements of the doll. I'm hoping to wear this for Halloween this year!

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I chose a dictionary for my object, hoping to symbolize the death of printed dictionaries and the shift to electronic dictionaries. I thought it was ironic that this specific dictionary had a note that said this addition included "internet terms."

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2. Final Product (Dictionary and mixed media)

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2. Final Product (Dictionary and mixed media)

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I originally wanted to make a crown of thorns, but then decided to make a chaotic cage to show how I felt very trapped a couple years ago. Then I added some pages from a culinary book with some hanging lens from the glasses. The pages show how knowledge helped me to gain some structure .The lens showcases. the perspectives of the mentors/chefs who helped me grow as a person.

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I melted down some candlesticks to make ice cubes, a straw, a "drink," and a cup.

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Book

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Used the pages in the book to create a tree. Idea was to turn the book into where it originally came from.

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1. Here is a photo of my original objects, a mask and a box of tissues.

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2. Here is my reconstructed object, an acting stage.

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My project was a house made completely out of books. Here are the three sizes of books I used, although they aren't the exact books. I used all elements of the books to create my house: the spines, pages, and backing.

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2. Los libros de la frontera: "The books of the border"

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2. Los libros de la frontera: "The books of the border"

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This is the side view!

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3. Los libros de la frontera: "The books of the border"

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3. Los libros de la frontera: "The books of the border"

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My final project was a house, symbolizing the precarious sense of home that Mexican immigrants and those of Mexican-American descent often experience as they journey across the border of the US. The roof is an open book, symbolizing simultaneously the power found in reading alongside the uncertainty of life on the border. It is open to my favorite paragraphs of Gloria Anzaldúa's influential essay on linguistics and racial identity, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." For the base of the house, I used modge-podge to create wall-collages of famous Chicano authors and their works, symbolizing the formation of linguistic power in the voices of those who used their platform to create cultural identity. Finally, I have deconstructed walls on either side with famous Chicano graffiti and murals, symbolizing the impermanence of the so-called "informal architecture" often found around houses the border but emphasizing the power created even in the midst of that insecurity.

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Here is a photo of my object, a disposable mask, in its original state.

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Here is a photo of my deconstructed and reformatted object, a bicycle made of disposable masks.

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Jessica Stockholder: Plastic bricolage | installation

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Jessica Stockholder: Plastic bricolage | installation

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Jessica Stockholder was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1959. She studied painting at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and received an MFA from Yale University. Stockholder is a pioneer of multimedia genre-bending installations that have become a prominent language in contemporary art. Her site-specific interventions and autonomous floor and wall pieces have been described as "paintings in space." Stockholder's complex installations incorporate the architecture in which they have been conceived, blanketing the floor, scaling walls and ceiling, and even spilling out of windows, through doors, and into the surrounding landscape.

Her work is energetic, cacophonous, and idiosyncratic, but close observation reveals formal decisions about color and composition, and a tempering of chaos with control. In a single work, Stockholder deploys a myriad of materials that might include bales of hay, fruit, toys, laundry baskets, curtains, heat lamps, fans, yarn, newspaper, bowling balls, automobiles, and construction materials: bricks, concrete, plywood, and sheetrock.

To the vibrantly colorful plastic products of consumer culture, she adds painted areas of bright hues, calibrating each color for maximum optical and spatial impact. Stockholder's installations, sculptures, and collages affirm the primacy of pleasure, the blunt reality of things, and the rich heterogeneity of life, mind, and art amid a vortex of shifting polarities-abstraction/realism, classical order/intuitive expressionism, conscious thought/unconscious desire.

Jessica Stockholder is Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale University. Her work has been exhibited at Dia Center for the Arts, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City; SITE Santa Fe; the Venice Biennale; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; among others.

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