I carved this beauty of soap... SOAP! THE KIND YOU RUB YOUR BUTT WITH!!

Here is my soap sculpture. It's almost ready for judging tomorrow. I just have to build a base. I think I'm going to use film negatives to sit it on. I'm just going to add some texture and smooth out the bottom.

Note to Self: Unplug the Hot Glue Gun

Go ahead and try to tell me that this post isn't related to art!

Today I grabbed my hot glue gun and unplugged it from the wall. Apparently they do not have auto shut off functions -- at least mine does not.

So here I am grabbing my materials for art class, and, thinking the glue gun is cool, clutch it in my hands.

Well now I have a nice burn between my fingers to show for it. Lesson learned.

Transformation Art Project Brainstorm List

For our next project in art, we are to transform an every day object into something else. Laurie showed us lots of awesome examples and I compiled a list of objects I could possibly use.

1. chop sticks
2. sugar cubes
3. beef bouillon cubes?!
4. chocolate chip cookiesw
5. toothpicks
6. cutlery
7. ipad
8. film
9. light bulbs
10. toilet paper rolls
11. matches
12. cell phones
13. baby doll
14. pink flamingo
15. clothes
16. money
17. wallet
18. reward cards (from albertsons, best buy, fred meyer, etc)
19. gum balls

After asking some of my peers questions about these objects, I found something interesting about the beef bouillon cubes. People associated them with flavor, soup, broth, but never... COW.

Since beef is a cow, it made me think of how fake they actually are. They have nothing to do with cows, because its all just fake flavoring. I think doing some kind of cow sculpture out of them would be an interesting narrative about the food industry, what we consider "food", and how we as consumers choose food to buy.

Wire Sculpture Artist Statement

My wire armature sculpture was inspired mainly by student examples that were shown in class lecture. I saw skin that was tight and stretched, cream colored that reminded me of old-fashioned aerial machines. Elegance and simplicity were both things I wanted to embody with this piece.

The sculpture contains two types of design: line and plane. The line is curved, with flat bottoms, juxtaposed cylindrical to the other lines. The planes are wing-shaped, the bottom ones slightly bigger than the other and positioned upward along the line. I chose copper wire, over a much thinner silver wire because of its dexterity and sturdiness. With it, I was able to stretch the cream colored nylon over the pieces without compromising their shape.

Wire Sculpture Done!

Alright guys, here it is. The final piece, all put together and shined up and ready for critique.

The whole thing.

The top, a ball of nylon holding it all together.

Wings.

The wingtips made this awesome rippled pattern as they were pulled which cast some awesome shadows.

Copper, steel, and aluminum... oh my!

My wonderful wife went to Pacific Recycling and picked out some nice copper wire for me to start my sculpture and it's perfect for what I need. Not too thick, not too thin, very sturdy, and easy to move. I've started bending the pieces to get them all straight so I could start working in the studio.

It's difficult, but I spotted some clamps in our studio that smash the wire into a straight line so I'm not too worried.

One thing I don't like about working with wire is the smell. My hands smelled like metal all day and it was only after much scrubbing and soap did the strong irony smell go away. But also I'm doing something with my hands for the first time in a long time, so I'm enjoying making nice shapes and 90 degree angles with the wire.

After multiple attempts with other types of material, I've started using hot glue for the corners and it holds together very nicely. These pictures aren't as good because I just took them with my iPhone vs. my DSLR, but you can see that it's coming together nicely.

Now for the "skin" I'm using cream-colored nylon stockings. I bought both white and cream-colored and the white is just way too white. Makes it look too fancy. The cream-color is perfect because it makes it look antique, especially accented by the wire copper. The stockings were perfect also because the wire shapes just slid right in. The copper didn't bend under the pressure of the stockings, which hold very tightly and let light though in some of the stretched areas.

Wire Sculpture Final Sketches

Alright so I'm decided on a sketch I'm going to use to build my wire sculpture. Here are a couple preliminary sketches, including my "tentacle idea".

You can see I discovered this shape after working on the "tentacles". The resemble wings, and I can see a creamy colored material stretched over them tightly that would be perfect.

You can click on this picture above to see it more detailed. On the left I'm brainstorming some basic shapes, mimicking my paper tests and some other shapes. You can see the "tentacle" on the bottom left, the first one I came up with and then repeated later. On the right, I started exploring that "wing" shape and seeing what I could do with it. On the bottom right, is the first of the final sketch. The top drawing would never stand up, so I solved that problem by giving it this circular pattern. This gives it 4 legs that will keep it upright nicely.

Finally, here is the finished sketch that I'm going to be working with. I like it because it reminds me of old aerial machines with it's "rocket" like structure. I think its perfect for the assignment also because it has line and plane and stand up using only the wire.

Wire Armature Sculpture Brainstorm

In class, we were shown lots of examples for our upcoming assignment. We're doing wire armature sculptures with "skin". I immediately started sketching ideas on my paper as she showed us past students' artwork. Some really great ones caught my eye, including some with stretched canvas for skin and wire shaped like clam shells. This made me really want to do something inspired by something aquatic.

During our brainstorm we got pieces of scrap paper and magazine pages and crumbled and formed them to find shapes that were interesting. I really liked the clam shape, so I did some folding and moving till I came up with these simple things:

 Translating this to some sort of sketch, and I found something really interesting. As I formed the geometric shape that trailed from the fan folding pattern, I noticed my sketch was turning out to look like something of a tentacle. I went with it and started filling it in to add depth to the end and more geometric body work. The brainstorm left me with this shape:

I really like it too. It's organic, yet geometric. I can picture them being tall and kinetic as you walk around them. As for skin options, I have a whole list:

• toilet paper
• nylon
• stockings
• thin fabric
• condoms? - suggested by Laurie (LOL!)
• celophane
• gauze
• feathers
• balloons
• silk
• wedding veils
• gauze

Not sure what I plan on using, or if this is even the shape I'm going to go with. Lot's more work to do. Tuesday we start working with wire.