First semester: Complete!

This is an update on whats brewing in my studio:  I've started an installation project with a fellow classmate with a focus on invasive species (I will elaborate when we figure out what that will mean for this piece).  We have several spaces that are available for a week at a time at school for display of artwork and to experiment with.  We will be aiming to get one of those, but possibly rent a space in Pomona as well, to get some public reaction.  I'm crocheting this "model" of skin cells... I'm saying that loosely because its a loose interpretation and its taken on other connotations since its original conception.

  We want to space that we install to feel taken over, or overrun with this stuff.  That means there will be a huge amount needed.  I'm on ball-of-yarn number 3.  The picture shows two balls of yarn.  I have a lot to go, but the good news is, it doesn't take too long.

New sculpture

   So it has been a little bit since I've posted pictures of what I'm working, so I thought I'd do that now.   This is a picture of a fellow student wearing a piece I made.  The piece, though small represents one of my new concepts.  (New as in this year.)  It is part animal in shape, and part armor.  This ambiguous-ness between technology and nature is a common theme for me.

   The next piece can be looked at as ribs or spines, or even an insect.  Each steel rod was hammered to shape and then welded to the steel base. There is this progressive curve created through the shape of the ribs.  Its about 6 feet in length and about 2 feet tall.  This is my first welding project here at school and has given me a fair amount of practice.  I engineered the piece to have the welds out of view in case they were sloppy, as well as to remove the construction of the piece from the context of the work.  This piece is still being worked on, though the last few things are finishing touches.

   This thing hanging on my wall is a piece made of tape and wooden dowel rods.  Again exploring line as a way to create movement and progression within a piece, but adding ideas of cellular or plant-like growth to it.  I also wanted to make something outside of metal, and this is very transportable and does not require the same stamina and energy to work on as the steel work.  I am planning to fill the entire studio wall with this, and have been spyed at coffee shops and riding shotgun to Los Angeles while working on this in my lap.  I am making about a yard at a time.  This represents about 5 yards.  The spacing between the dowel rods varies but the "height" remains constant.  I'd like to take the finished version of this and do some guerrilla photographs at a corporate building lobby, maybe a bridge or piece of architecture. 

   So that's what is going on in my studio.  I am nearing the end of my first semester at Claremont and am planning on utilizing winter break as a time for major production in the studio, along with reading a lot.

Grant Funded!

Good News Everyone!  My research/reading group proposal was approved and is now grant supported.  In case you missed that post, its called Methods Of Innovation: The Process of Gaining Inspiration From the Other Side (a few entries back).  Please contact me if you are interested in attending.  Even if you are not a CGU student, I am interested in getting representation from different fields to provide balance to the group (writers, actors, dancers, musicians, historians, philosophers, physicists, anyone in biological/medical/chemical sciences, architecture, engineering, mathematics, and anyone with proficiency in any other subject.  I am also seeking special guest speakers, suggestions on books, articles, film clips, etc. that might inspire people.  I can send you the full syllabus to review.

Art All Stars

I got to meet one of the biggest names in contemporary painting this past weekend.  CHUCK CLOSE!!!  I went with some friends to an opening for him at Blum & Poe, the first in a while in the LA area. I got to tell him a story about being yelled at by security guards at the National Gallery in DC, when trying to inspect one of his paintings.  The painting was Fannie, and its a portrait of an old woman made entirely of thumbprints.  I was 14 or so, and was leaning in to see this wrinkle in her clothes.  He told me that happens to him a lot.  I went with a few school friends and respective spouses who shot a picture of us with him.  We were all gushing, because we are art students and have all studied painting.  That's me on the left, with Chuck in the middle, Kristen, and Stephanie on the far right.  The painting behind him is one of his self portraits.  For those of you who don't know his work, Close has a rare condition called face blindness, where he can't recognize faces.  He started painting portraits of people using a grid system to blow their faces up to larger-than-life size as a way to help him remember the faces.  He's famous for the size of the paintings, as well as this 1970's aesthetic of the portraits.  In another room of the gallery there were some paint on paper pieces done with colored dots.  He layered the colored dots with smaller one of contrasting colors to really help push the effect: a newspaper-print looking painting.

Methods of Innovation

Methods of Innovation

The Process of Gaining Inspiration from the Other Side

Are you interested in talking about your ideas with people outside your field of study?  Are you seeking practice in presentation and defense of your research?  Would you like to meet other CGU students and learn what they are studying?  Are you interested in exploring the ways that transdiciplinary approaches to learning can affect ingenuity, innovation, and creativity in your research?  Are you inspired, but not sure how to apply that inspiration to your scholastic work?

A Call for a Meeting of the Minds

We are seeking interested persons (faculty, staff, and students) FROM ALL FIELDS OF STUDY to participate in a reading/research group here at CGU.  We believe that transdisciplinary exploration is a tried and true method for innovation, creation, and successfully inspiring the thought process.  Participants will have the opportunity to share their research and gain feedback from other disciplines, make friends and “resources” in other complimentary fields of study, learn new ways of approaching research by observing methods of others, and ultimately have conversations that brighten your light bulb!

For more information, please contact Jackie Bell (MFA ’13) at:

jacqueline.bell@cgu.edu or 909-438-1811

Ramblings

I had a great conversation today, with my friend and classmate.  She is doing some work that talks about the empathy and lack of empathy for others, even those that you really have no way to relate to.  This got me to thinking (oh, no!) about how empathy is an instinctual part of the human psyche.  It serves as a crucial survival mechanism not for the individual but for the species.  Empathy and sympathy can cause the individual to slow down, to stop and help someone, putting themselves at risk in a threatening situation, but it promotes the "sticking together" mentality and strategy during threats to the species, or to large groups of humans threatened by animals, disease, or even zombies (hey, it's almost Halloween).

Another aspect of the empathize idea is the popularity of such things as film, Television, and even music (specifically vocal).  These are art forms that express the human experience, but these art forms specifically can be more relatable to the masses because of the visual and oral presence of humans, and human emotion.  There is a base level of understanding that the person on screen is happy or sad, regardless of language, due to the visual nature of the medium.  Or, in the case of music, you are compelled to respond to the voice you hear singing.  You don't just hear notes and language, but the emotion expressed.  This is especially true currently, as most music genres have taken on an emotional trend with the vocals, to the point of over emphasizing emotion conveyed by the voice.  As a listener or viewer, you respond in kind by empathy.

Copper Sacs

These (collectively) are the first official piece made in grad school.  Really rough, larger than my previous works, and the first in a long time to lack an architectural/industrial structure to them.  When formally displayed, they will be suspended from the ceiling with monofilament (clear fishing line), staggered at eye level (give or take 5 feet from the ground).  I am considering adding another element to them, but for now this is it.  In two weeks CGU will have a show representing all the first year students called 27+3.  This is my piece for the show.

The piece references an organic fragility.  While made of metal, the forms are light, airy, and delicate like egg shells.  They will be patina'ed black and sanded lightly to reveal shiny copper highlighting the bumps and wrinkles in the metal.  Construction techniques include raising, forging, and soldering.

Paper Vessels Installation

So I am in this gender studies class, and one of the projects is an Exquisite Corpse.  Equisite Corpse is a method of collaboration used commonly in classroom settings to provoke and encourage outside the box thinking.  In this case we are starting with an empty room and each student in the class gets the room for an entire week to create anything they want on the theme of gender/sex/sexuality.  I chose to go first which means a blank slate (save for a few words written on the walls from our professor during the first class.

I thought about this for a few days and the recurring thing for me was the notion of women as vessels.  I'm more of a tomboy than anything and experiencing pregnancy over the summer was a strange thing.  Dresses and makeup have not been a part of my definition of womanhood or being female, but pregnancy and giving birth is.  A lot of people mentioned to me "women having been giving birth for thousands of years..." and it made me think about the birthright of being female.  I decided to make a bunch of paper forms.  The forms are reminiscent of cups or bowls, flowers, and the female body.  Each one is a little different in shape, size, and color.  I stacked them in the room given to us to work with, and drew lines on the floor leading to them.  The lines are alluding to sperm and men in general, as they are a part of this "woman becoming vessel" process.

New sculpture

 I made these copper grass pieces and this morning ran out at dawn to install them and take photos.  This is a piece of private property right on Rt. 66, that only ever gets used for the sale of Christmas trees in the winter.

The idea was to make industrial grass, and have it growing in an industrial environment.  It's kind of a joke to me... real grass can't grow here so lets grow fake grass.  I think my next move is to do this again in a place that has no plant life whatsoever.  I'm also thinking of painting the grass so hideous industrial color like neon green.  I want to do everything I can before painting, because once the paints on, it's not coming off.