Constellation

Project 8: A Collection and a Means for Display

This culminating project was a way in which I could synthesize all the connections emerging between all the facets of my life this semester. This visual display was a kinesthetic way of meditating on the interconnectedness. My relationships, home environment, interests, research papers, reading, moods, courses, and artwork all are entangled. The objects signifying each are embedded in this web.

The readings and writings for Theory and Criticism, the jottings of my Senior Show ideation, and the research papers on a filmmaker and a ceramicist comprise the 5'5" by 5'5" cube. This words-structure alludes to knowledge that has been added to my internal infrastructure. External objects and artworks are made personally intelligible to me by this structure.

Displaying the interiority of my mind is fore-fronted by a reversal in which the ideas that remain unseen are in closest proximity to the audience. While the objects suspended inside still command attention before the words, their dependence on their framework is obvious.

The objects include: crosswords, sketches, coffee bags, a Wii remotes, ceramic eggs, a used plastic bottles, chopsticks, books, a wire whisk, and more. So varied and yet remarkably cohesive.

The points for fastening connections on the cube are determined by the words that inform a sequence of connections. Each object is strung to another for another specific reason. Sometimes the reason is content-based and other times aesthetic. The connections would need conjecture for anyone not privy to my explanations. This is where the performance at the critique was the only format by which I could complete the expression. But the process of creating my constellation was a format beneficial for me for myself. Self-expression is for others and for ourselves.

The reason for my personal benefit is based in harmonizing two modes of expression–– writing and making–– that are both valuable to me and yet often frustratingly separate. The intertwining of the two in this three-dimensional mind map is very satisfying, holistic in its inclusion of all parts of my life and the cooperation of internal and external environments. 

Project 7: (Film 2)

This open-ended film project only mandated the use of two or more perspectives. The freedom was initially and persistently intimidating, but I think it allowed a certain ownership of content.

For me, it is important that I process my own life through specific arrangements of details that recollect and reinterpret what clutters my psyche. Identity and our active role in shaping and presenting it, the strange space between internal world and external world, the mirrors of many kinds that reflect back to us who we are and are not... al these themes are interesting to me.

Stylistically, I notice that I tend towards a collage-effect. I like an eclectic assortment of visuals and audio because I think it lends more ambiguity and therefore is more moldable to subjective interpretation. I am steering my viewers but letting them sort and make sense of rather disparate elements.

I have my own contextual framework and they have theirs. I like to capitalize on that and let the art object serve as an instrument for introspection.

One note further, the critique time is a veritable collage itself. It is incredible to see the variety of films created by peers. By comparison, I help better identify my own practice. My friends' films too serve as a mirror for myself.

https://drive.google.com/a/westmont.edu/file/d/0B6uGslPSdl3cRDRjWVVEajNzOFE/view?usp=sharing

Project 6: (Film 1): the 5 x 5

Embarking on our film unit, we got our feet wet with the 5x5 clip. With each of the 5 clips aiming at 5 second durations, the structure was set. So, one factor was comfortably set aside, allowing us to focus on content and editing.

My film was an exploration of daily living. With my friend and housemate Caroline, we meshed commonplace activities–– watching our go-to show, New Girl, and eating dinner–– in hopes of sparking a dialogue. 

Titled "Communion" this clip highlights the pseudo-community we long for during mealtimes and satiate vicariously through fictional friend groups.

In frantic succession within the 5 second constraints, the clips hoped to create a playful yet poignant space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdxHlANxk08

Project 5: Generosity 

The impetus for this project was our reflection on "Love Languages": Task, Treasure, Time, Touch, Talk.  

The questions prompted: How is giving love a performance? Do we effectively make use of our love-language predilections? What giving-capacity might we want to grow into?

The requirement: act generously in a way that can be performed using an object(s).

My love language is quality Time. Hands-down. Coming in second, Touch (but mostly in terms of how I receive love). Examples circulated in my head of how I give these–– Time especially –– in daily life. Reciprocating back massages while watching a show with my sister, long car drives where one person has my un-diverted attention. I was having a hard time syncing my life with object-oriented performance.

The idea evolved into HOW I give. Giving is spontaneous and reflective. Giving is a response to someone's need. I plan to have time with someone when I observe the need to be with them, something that person displays prompts me to that conclusion. Or someone requires my time and I reorganize to accommodate. And this extends past Time. I don't premeditate giving of any sort. It feels most authentic to me when I offer of myself to meet another's need.

So, my giving is based on chance. It is giving up control.

Realizing that, the object clicked into place: a Fortune-Teller! As an instrument of chance and choice, it steers a playful-interaction between two people. I would make these in abundance when they trended in 5th grade! In the spirit of style, they all boasted unique designs. I would make one once more.

As my Generosity Object, it incorporated the Love Languages of Touch, Talk, and Treasure. In the critique, it mediated the interactions between each person. To some extent, this mode of chance-giving requires preparation. I came prepared with Hershey Kisses to offer if "Give a treat" was my prompt and I brought a notebook of collected quotes if "Give a thought" was selected. I'd like to approach life armed for generosity more often. Come prepared, but be flexible. 

The performative script follows:

Me: * Silently present the fortune-teller with numbers displayed *

Participant: *Number chosen*

Me: * Object opened and closed accordingly, revealing icons: hand, gift, speech bubble, and question mark *

"What do you need?"

Participant: * Selects icon *

Me: * Reveal flap to generosity-prompt *

Read aloud.

Perform.

My aim was to playfully illustrate the reciprocity and flexibility of common generosity.

Project 4: Ritual

This project asked me to transform a space through a weeklong performance ritual. To create personal meaning for the ritual, I began to think about what kind of actions I hope to make space for in my life. I have lived in Santa Barbara in the summer and during that time I started my days in solitude on the beach. Walking up and down the shore gets my mind and body warmed up for the day. I miss this time during the school year. I can never seem to fit it in when studies come first. So, making the beach an assignment is a way around this unfortunate prioritization!

But I wanted to add a part to the ritual that increases mindfulness for an aspect in the rest of my day. Environmental issues seemed a natural next step. I am very frustrated by the amount of plastic I use in a week. I buy water because our tap water is has an unhealthy mineral content. I am tasked with recycling in my household and quantify our consumer waste in bags and bins. Next step for me was getting a specific grasp on my part: I would begin collecting my used plastic and weigh it. Keeping pace with my tab of plastic, I would collect and record tar on the beach.

I was going to do a plastic for plastic equivalency. But, thankfully, our beaches are relatively free from plastic! So I broadened my collecting to tar– the real tragedy for our beaches recently– and, like plastic, not biodegradable.

The goal: Clearing my mind on the beach now paired with clearing the beach. Giving back to it what it does for me.

The strategy: For seven days, I walked on the beach in the morning and collected plastic all day after.

 

It wasn't as meditative any more. My mind wasn't absorbed in my thoughts; it was searching the sand. But maybe I was clearing my conscience a little more.

There was no real solution reached. But I count increased awareness as a significant outcome. I was measuring my difference in grams but, in the grand scheme of environmental impact, my 1050 grams of tar are insignificant. This was for me.

To represent the week's ritual on critique day, I wanted to combine the two activities visually. I arranged my collected plastic in a trail spilling out of the box I used to contain it. As the class followed me along the path, they picked up the plastic, mirroring the way my path along the beach was spent stooping down to pick up tar. A performative semblance of my week. An awareness-creating action.

This project reminded me more than any others that, as an artist, it's in the process that I create meaning for myself.

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Small Gestures Installation

With limited resources and limited 2 days time, I and my two collaborators devised an installation on campus that we hoped would serve as a playful poke at ethics for any observers. But the idea for the installation arose by a series of associative leaps.

Googly eyes got us started. How fun would it be to animate the lemons on the lemon tree with eyes!? But lemons watching student passer-bys turns the table of who the audience is. They seem to silently judge too, watching when no one else is watching. 

Reminds me of the quote "Character is who you are when no one else is watching". 

These lemons become analogues of God's omnipresence. How do we combine character and the lemon's watching presence? 

. . .

An honor-system lemonade stand! 

The mute lemon onlookers oversee the stand, a reminder that "no one watching" is in fact never the case. We are always accountable for our actions.

The lemonade stand was built in front of the lemons, equipped with a jar for collecting the requested 50 cents per glass. The lemons were surprisingly inconspicuous. All the better. Those who noticed the surreptitious lemons were thrown off kilter. 

The jar accrued some bills and coins in seeming proportion to the reduced volume of lemonade. A display of integrity? Or intimidation by lemons? I'm optimistic in thinking the first. Observation of the stand leads me to think the lemons served as a startlingly, rather comical gimmick for those who noticed them. Also, rather morbid.. As they silently observe as drinking their juice.

The stand alone functioned as an integrity stratagem. The lemons drove it home with a laugh.

Assemblage

Visiting a thrift shop with a mindset that turned all objects to inspiration-fodder, our chosen things launched us into an exercise in connection-building. Take on object, let it form an association or pair it with the other idea that pops into mind, see what that combination yields, modify it, add another element, tailor it in a direction. . .  all these things make me feel like a curator of associations.

It started with a plate, a square sushi plate. Asian cuisine influences my cooking so I imagined I could plate something inedible and dress it up to look like a noodles or sushi. I went with noodles. Then "hair" came to mind. Earlier that day, I made a Venn diagram of materials/things that I'm attracted to, repelled by, or a bit of both. Hair was the item that fell in the overlap. Fascination and revulsion all in one, the response is contextual. On the head, beautiful. On my bathroom floor, plastered to the shower, between my toes.... nasty.

So, a noodle nest made of hair was the natural conclusion. As I was collecting hair (unbeknownst to my roommates) I felt like a scavenging bird. And rolling the noodles together with clay made it apparent my materials were more inclined towards a muddy mess. So the "noodles" was dropped and the "nest" took over. 

Looking to my bathroom floor for more inspiration, floss presented itself to my imagination. So did a couple stray fingernail clippings with remnants of nail polish. Ceramic eggs glazed with my nail polish quickly adorned the hair nest.

Assembled together, it became like "hair" in my Venn diagram: revolting and appealing simultaneously. Somehow it gave a sense of fragility. Perhaps due to the brittle loops of clay, or the airy suspension of floss between fuzzy strands. The connotations of eggs in a nest lend a vulnerability. Especially when suspended on a wobbly welded pole outside, gently swaying with the breeze. 

The associations were tenuous. But their interplay worked towards "fragility". I can hardly take credit, I let the materials have their way. I crafted the thing, but the thing's associations controlled the process. I tried to make this an exercise in release for me. Release of control and release of self-consciousness as I was preparing to present my nastiest-to-date project as "art".