Class Pictures June 12, 2007
Posted by Mitchell in Art.trackback
Paper bug I assembled at the last minute:
To practice for the wire shoe project Jeff, our instructor, had us construct a wire cube. I strugggled a bit with it until I came up with the coiling technique to help with structure stability. This was my first time playing with aluminum wire and it’s really soft.
The next day we were to bring in the shoe that we were going to sculpt. Here’s mine. I wear this shoe and its mate to work every day. I liked this shoe for the sculpture project because of the clean shape and lines. I thought it was going to be fairly easy and quick to do as well.
Not really. At least with the approach I decided to take. Our shoes are to be an open design, so we’re not weaving solid shapes here. That presents me with a bit of a problem. There’s not a whole lot of supporting structure here between the sole and the upper elements of the shoe. I turned to my cube buddy – the coil.
The most prominent features of this shoe are the rolled leather seams and the padded section near the ankle. I coiled wire around a wood screw for the thin rolls, and around a sharpie pen for the padded section. I used two different kinds of wire for the thinner rolls. The top portion was in that soft aluminum, th lower section in thinner, stiffer steel wire. Unfortunately, neither wire proved to be sufficient to hold their proper shapes. The aluminum was too soft, the steel was too springy. I bullied a thicker, stiffer steel wire into the necessary shapes and threaded the coils on them. I have a nice seam structure in the back that I duplicated so I was able to attach the seam pieces to it and I’m good in the back. The front structure is a little shakey though. I’m going to fix that with a stiff tongue structure.
I’m working on the sole of the shoe now. The sole is a thick, hard rubber with a bit of a waffle pattern on the bottom. I’m making it out of copper wire so it will be a nice contrast to the steel / aluminum of the top. I made good progress today, but I still have a lot to do. The instructor won’t be in tomorrow, so no class. We can show up to work if we want to, but I’m going to come home to work on it.
So, more stuff tomorrow! Also, some development with the next sculpture’s concept.
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The Center of the Anomaly 
Why is art so…complicated? That doesn’t look like fun to me. But I’m sure when you’re done I will want to add it to my Enas collection.
I switched jobs, btw, and my boss is mightily impressed with the ceramic/firing work on your Skull. He admires it every day. Thank you again for your gift.
Art mirrors life, to some degree generally, so it’s sometimes complicated. Sometimes it’s stupidly simple. I’m not wired for stupidly simple so I usually wind up going with “complicated”. And who said it was supposed to be fun? It’s often hard, requiring my most intense concentration and incredibly frustrating when my concentration and hard earned skills aren’t up to the vision. Fun enters into it after it’s done and something nice emerges to reward the effort. Fun is the realization that new skills were aquired, or blunt ones were sharpened, enabling me to contemplate attempting more ambitious projects, or directing my imagination along new routes. Fun is giving away some of the things I make to people who will enjoy and appreciate them. And you’re very welcome, KC.
New job huh? Career / job satisfaction advancement I hope? Tell the new boss I said “Hey!”
I was talking about something like this some time ago with my father. I always felt that when I needed to be I was rather decent in the use of words (though I could expand my vocabulary a bit) and stuff, and my pops said I should try writing a book.
Then I tried to explain to him the amount of discipline to come up with a beginning a middle and an end, and you can’t appreciate the whole thing or how well you did until you are finished, and how I don’t have the discipline for that.
I hate the “dahling” crowd, but people who are artisticly minded impress me. Working from a completely unrelated foundation to create something with substance, that ain’t an easy thing to do, for anyone, even if you know exactly what it is you want to do.