Installation Project Proposal

For the installation project I would like to create a miniature zoo where the animals have escaped along the paths on campus. As a student attending college can be similar to the animals and how they feel being at the zoo, at least for me. College students are in a sense put on display because of the work and feedback they must exchange with their professors. I think that our visible appearance is also judged by professors and everyone else. College students also spend large amounts of time on campus because they feel that they have a responsibility to be there and that their parents and professors seem to want them to be there. At least some of the time that I have spent in college I have felt like a caged animal in the zoo, but the difference between myself and the animals in the zoo is that I will leave the college, but most of them will not leave the zoo so I am sort of playing around with the idea of the animals leaving their cages but then they are still on the college campus where the students must also be.

Robert Arneson's Egghead instalations

Robert Arneson was a master at ceramics and was a professor at UCD. For the University Arneson created a series of five large heads called eggheads meaning intellectuals. each head has its own name: Bookhead, Yin and Yang, Eye on Mrak ("Fatal Laff") which is shown in the image, and Star Gazer. They still remain on the UCD campus. The heads talk about the dualities between students and how we need the differences because they can sometimes bring us closer together, but also Arneson mostly wanted the work to be comical.

Artist Talk # 5

I attended Fereshteh Toosi's talk about her art work. Toosi is a new media artist all though she says that new media is not the best label because later on it may no longer be new. She discussed how you cannot be a new media artist just by doing some work on the computer. There has to be a process to this type of art work and a real purpose and real thought involved for it to be successful and others should be involved in some way. Her work seems to involve some portion of society and politics. She created a video taped work called Saddam's Birthday which was related to the Iranian new year, the fifth year that we are going into the war and her personal background. it was also in relation to how there was being a movie done and someone was supposed to be cast as Saddam also if the real Saddam wanted to be seen in public it would not be him, it would be a look alike. The work was where a man and a woman dressed in bright almost clown like clothing and wore comical masks that resembled Saddam's face. They walked around outside talking to people and having them take their photo. Unfortunately she did not talk about what happened and how people reacted to it. She talked about other works show created but Saddam's Birthday was what most interested me. One thing that was impressive that she did and many other artists that have given a talk do not do is that she talked about her thought and research of the projects she worked on.

Artist Talk #4

I attended a talk by artist Chris Coleman who uses technology and art to discuss issues and problems in the world that relate to society. My favorite of his worked was titled Collusion. The work was of a building emitting and taking back in the smoke it emitted into the air. The movement of the smoke was very similar to the way that a human being breaths but smoke from a building unlike what we breath pollutes the air causing some of use to have trouble breathing. Also the movement of the smoke was almost calming in the work and I was tempted to breath at the same tempo as the building,

Installation Art

Fountain by Duchamp is an installation in the sense that is was an ordinary object put into a space that it would not ordinarily be seen. it changes the idea of art from what is pleasing to what the artist says is art and to what is out of the ordinary. We have all seen a urinal, at least men have but what is so interesting about the work is that Duchamp saw a urinal and thought of a fountain changing the entire beaning and purpose of what a urinal is and went a step further by taking it out of the public rest room and moving it into a gallery which is a different sort of public space.

Cheese hand

To explore personal space and wearable objects I decided upon creating a cheese hand. To make the hand I first created a complicated two part plaster mold of my right hand. I used Monterey Jack cheese to pour into the mold but unfortunately even after the cheese was cold and solid I had to add more cheese to my creation and even then it did not look the way that I wanted it to. When the hand was done I added acrylic finger nails to the tips of the hands fingers.
I took the hand to the Mexican restaurant Cerro Grande and I left the hand on a plate. I hid my own hand and pulled my sleeve over the cheese hand so that it would appear to be apart of my body. My Fiancée and two married couples came with me for the dinner however it seemed like the men at the table were more disgusted with the sight of the cheese hand than the women which was interesting. The women were the only people who ended up participating.
I wanted the cheese hand to look as though it was my hand. The fact that it looked gross just made it more interesting. By my friends eating my hand they were taking in apart of me that could then come alive within them so part of my message has to do with cannibalism. Another important message I was trying to convey was giving an important part of me over to those I care about. Artist’s hands are very important to them and to be missing one of them would mean that they could no longer create. My friends and I discussed the project and the hand and we sort of linked it to the body of Christ. The hand was not blessed but the important of an artists hand seemed to be convincing enough. It is a blessing to be able to work creatively with your hands. Jesus gave himself up for others to help them, and although this was a foe hand and only a part of myself the meaning was giving up to those I care about a very valued part of me so that they may use it to be better people or more creative people.

Art event # 3

I went to a talk by our TA, Lacey Volk. Her talk was actually for the print making class and I just happened to get invited. Lacey uses CAD, photo shop, and many other programs including the three dimensional printer to create her art work. She seems to mainly work in black and white and grey scale but said she is beginning to move towards color again. I like that she uses different shapes and lines to create images and is not afraid to use her own image in her work.