growing into sculptures

I've graduated! It's been a long time since I've posted any sort of progress, so here's what I'm working on now. My work is shifting from sedimentary geology and into botany, still focused on the moveability of landscape and the impermanence of place. I believe that plants are an excellent way to communicate these concepts; Terrariums were first used to transport plants across the Atlantic to the New World. The plants are characteristics of place (ie flora and fauna), and the ability to make them transportable or wearable seems very surreal to me, much like tectonic plate movements. There are also undertones of sustainability and urban farming that are very intriguing to me. 

These are rough ideas I'm just hashing out, stay tuned for more progress!

my window garden: watercress, basil, tomatoes, and succulents

I'm interested in the mediums plants can grow in, earth, air, and water. This species needs only a dish of water to thrive, and it's roots look like fish bones. 

Inside my succulent terrarium, stonecrop and lithops

I'm collaborating with artist Jessica Schimpf with growing in glass vessels, both found and hand blown.

These are test orbs to determine how well different plants can grow in a non draining glass shape. They're planted with gravel and vermiculite to help regulate the soil moisture inside the vessel. Above are spider plants and standard lawn grass.

 Above: Spoon Jade (E.T. Fingers) growing in soil.

Above: Spider Plant sprout growing directly in water. The roots will eventually fill the vessel.

I told myself I'd take a break from making things. Oops.

planter

I'm starting work on a new series of glass planters. Normal yard grass in topsoil with gravel and vermiculite. I plan to make multiples on an installation scale.

guts

This is what the inside of a build looks like for rapid prototyping (3D printing). This is just a test piece with five moveable parts to find the clearences and tolerences of the material I'll be using for a later project.

sandy

 Hand sanding this whole beast. Soon it will have a plume of blown glass coming out of the top, and hand carved wheels will be mounted in steel at its base.

 I'm gonna need much more paper.

Here's a bit of process- The top half needs to be attached to the bottom, but the carving needs to be finished first. I draw on the wood to figure out what form it needs to take.

My landscape boxes are coming along nicely. They can all be rearranged according to their horizon lines, and they are all different depths, so the landscape constantly morphs as the viewer moves around the piece.

home sweet home.

Melting Vase

A new project- blown glass into a wooden mold, then shaped as a vase.

Here's how it was made:



And how it turned out:

Also, here's a new bowl I made on Friday the 5th:

Clamp!

LAMINATION ANIMATION

(as my fellows call it)

I decided to make a stop motion animation of my sculptural process. Here's just a peek.

PREVIEW

Rough Cut- it still needs audio and color correction

This will be continued through the entirety of this sculpture's process. 

Shot on a Canon DSLR Eos. Edited in Final Cut Pro 7.

THE REAL PROCESS:

Leaning tower of geography.

Each set of glued wood is left overnight to set. Then those stacks are glued to one another, and then again, slowly gluing the entire tower together. The whole thing is about 4 feet tall so far. It's hard to do all this clamping alone, but here's a trick I figured out- Clamp down the clamps! Then you have a free hand to add more clamps. Also, don't get your skin caught in the slides. Blood blisters.

Clamp Round #1

Clamp Round #2

 Clamp Round #3

There's probably 3-4 more rounds of clamping. Then I get to carve it all smooth.

DO WORK.

Horizons

A bit of an update:

Bisque fired stoneware. I always forget how much I love working with the figure... I gotta get more into this. Anatomy is great.

 ...

Walking Landscape #2 is finished. Blown glass atmospheres are epoxied into place. The wood is sanded to 400 and finished with an oil rub.

 ...

These landscapes are created from the waste emulsion from my recent scratch film. They will be mounted onto wooden frames that will all hang at different distances from the wall. The horizon line connects the small landscapes to one another, and the staggered distance alters their relationship as you walk around the piece. I'm gonna make like five more of them.

 ...

 This is a photo collage I'm working on titled "M/Otherland"

These are all photos my father took during the time he fell in love with my mother in Colorado, where I was born. While I have no waking memory of these places, I'm incredibly drawn to them. I feel like these are photos of memories I've had and lost. They're samples of my sense of unknown belonging to the Rocky Mountains and the place I was born. The title at once describes my longing for my motherland, and the otherness I feel as a stranger to that land.

The photos are all aligned by their horizon line, connecting them to each other. Together, they create a surreal landscape of Colorado. Pictured above is my mother on a mountain slope, below is my father's truck we all used to camp in.

Scrrrratch

I've got some reels of exposed 16mm film. I've been getting the emulsion wet, then scratching it off. Then I draw on each frame of the film, so that when it's played through the projector, the drawings and scratch marks become animated.

This is camera-less film making.

The scratched off emulsion makes a great fibrous ink which dries hard, so I've been making some 6x6" landscapes with it that will be displayed triptych style.

This landscape will run through the projector and look like its wiggling. 

A"moving landscape"

I'll post the digitized video of this animation soon!!

Progress

I've been mad busy with all my studio work, which I've been trying to document as best I can.

Biggest news, I got my own bench space thanks to the object design department. Unfortunately, sculpture at Towson doesn't have the space for advanced undergraduate studios, so I have no consistent place to work. It was very nice of the jewelry ladies to offer me this space :)

I like the way they think in here. 

...

Here's a carved wooden body with holes for glass to fit. I'm in love with forstner bits.

The wood's been sanded super smooth and oiled up.

And the glass forms (from wooden molds) were epoxyed in.

Wooden molds for glass, you say? Why, yes. It's a process I'm still developing- lots of experiments to be had. There's alot of fire.

This is what it looks like once the glass has been annealed and cooled- it fits right back into its mold. The glass and the wood both become parts of the finished piece.

Only the top portion was for molding, the rest of the sculpture still needs to be laminated and carved. It'll eventually stand on three pointed legs as a tripod, glass and all.

...

Ceramics has me making a self portrait in stoneware,

which I decided to chop up.

Each portion of the face will be fired to cone 6, then mounted onto casters for gallery installation.

Somethin like this.

...

In other news, I have a piece showing at Gallery 788 in Baltimore next Thursday, Oct 10th. 

Opening runs from 6-10 and the show is open till Oct 31st.

788 Washington Blvd, Baltimore MD, 21230