Dear Diary,
My first reaction towards the theme of this class is “Oh My God!” I think I am going to have a hard time coming up with something special to do. I don’t have any previous experience with sculpture or making 3D stuff. Worse, I don’t understand the nature of the materials because I have no experience with sculpting. In addition, the themes Natural, Body, and Environment are each individually a good art topic to develop on, but when they are to be put together, I think I would have a great trouble coming up with a good idea. As a result, the videos are good in giving me a head start on what I can think about doing.
With the theme of space, we looked at a video called Secrets of the Sun. It talked about sun and its reaction to the universe and Earth. This video gave me a general idea on what I can do with the theme of Space: the universe, radiative beam, and threats from the natures power. This video triggered me to use the sonic arc from the sun’s surface explosion as an inspiration. I want my sculpture to have the feeling of energy in it. I feel like the arc and its twist is a good way to resemble movement. A question that comes up along with this idea is if the energy can still be resembled if the arc is used without the sun. I’m not planning to use the sun because I feel like it’s a very literal way to interpret space when it comes to talking about space as a universe.
With the theme of nature, it is very interesting to look at the video The Queen of Trees. First, I didn’t know that a single sycamore fig tree in Africa can be so important to so many organism in life. It serves the purpose of shelter, provides food, and gives of water source. This video leads me to consider environment as a whole and not as a single object anymore. The niche of each individual in a space can make living or life work for themselves and others. The symbiosis of the living and the interaction is something that can be very important. This leads me to consider shelter and the space for us humans. The same time I have so many thing to say about this theme making it too broad for me. If I want to express everything, I can think from this topic would be probably a two year long project.
With the theme of body appearing third video, I think David Altmejd demonstrated something that I might have high interest in doing. First he used glass to make his art pieces. Glass is a material that I’m highly interested in using. I think glass is a very interesting material to let people see many layers as he mentioned. It is good he already given me an idea how glass can be used in sculpture. I find this video very helpful in giving me an idea of what sculpture can be made off. From the video it showed me 3D sculpture can be made with 2D material and very flat materials too. Also wiring and gluing together pieces create very nice layering effect. Furthermore, this video gave me an idea of how body can be incorporated into sculpture. From my previous knowledge, I was just worried about just creating only full replica of human body. I think creating only certain parts of the body and repeating it to give emphasis is a creative way to make meaning out of just pure replica.
In conclusion, I think that all of these three videos gave a start of what I can do with each of the themes. A greater problem for me is if I want to use what the video is giving me to create my sculpture or do I want to explore greater meaning into these words myself. Furthermore, how am I going to combine these three topics together. These three topic are more own. So putting them together into one large piece can be quite a challenge.
Anko Chang
January 7, 2014
