Art21 Janine Antoni Video Response

In Janine Antoni's video I liked the personal aspect of her work. I like how she used her body to create the works and her personal connections to the rope. My two favorite works were when she walked across the horizon and the raw-hide sculpture. The part where she tight-roped across the horizon of her childhood was I felt very entertaining and a beautiful idea; to walk across something so intangible yet it looked realistic, I found it very intriguing. The raw-hide sculpture I found interesting in the way that it was in the shape of a person and the skin of a cow with the person imitating the cow. To feel what it's like to be in another creature's skin, literally, puts you closer to that animal, it makes a connection. Also, the fact that it was hollow showing that both the cow and the person are no longer present, it is just a skin, yet retains the shape, gives it that empty feeling yet a sense of what it is and what is used to be. My favorite part of Antoni's work over all is the way that she uses her body to create the art, which gives it a personal and human feeling and connects artist with artwork.

"It's About Time" Soap carving/destroying project

Beginning First soap carving

Taking a frog-like shape

Adding details

Finished soap sculpture frogs and model 

Frog 1

Frog 2

Side View

Aerial View

Another side view

Bottom View

Frog 2, before destruction (chosen as sacrifice)

Step 1: (subtractive) Cut frog in half and remove arms

Step 2: Continue to separate body parts

Step 3: (additive) add T-pins to hold pieces together

Step 4: (subtractive) Melting and charring over candle

Step 5: (additive) add melted soap and wax to sculpture

Step 6: (subtractive) Use sand-paper on soap

Step 7: (subtractive) Carve craters into soap

Step 8: (additive) Add color pins and tie string around T-pins

Step 9: (additive) Add red and orange melted wax over sculpture

Ta-da!

Memento Sculpture: Kennywood

In my memento sculpture I am representing my memory(s) of Kennywood, an amusement park in Pittsburgh, PA that originally opened in 1898 as a "trolley park" and in 1906 an amusement park. Many of its structures and rides date back to the parks opening in the early 1900s. Growing up in PA I spent much of my childhood in Kennywood and often wish to go back.What I remember most about Kennywood are the roller-coasters, my favorite type of ride. The most noticeable coaster was the Steel Phantom, a huge steel construction that immediately caught the eye. Entering Kennywood it looked like a huge steel mountain. The Steel Phantom has been remodeled, and is now called The Phantom's Revenge due to whiplash injuries and modern technology. However, it is still one of my most favorite roller-coasters from my childhood.

Kennywood Entrance

For my sculpture my three materials are balsa wood, galvanized wire, and yellow ink. The balsa wood represents the wooden coasters I enjoyed as a child, the chips and fraying to show that the park and coasters are old and aged. The arrow shape and yellow color represent the sign entering Kennywood which was very distinct and is a symbol of the park itself often showing up on merchandise from the park. The wire represents the Steel Phantom, the metal the steel, the swirls the twists and turns of the coaster you go around and that spiral sensation as you go around them , and then when the wire goes back down it represents the steep plunge, that tall drop, of the coaster. The wire is going through the balsa wood to represent when the Steel Phantom actually goes through the wooden coaster The Thunderbolt.

side view

side view

front view (chips on top of front part of arrow)

top view (fraying and chips on front tip and back of arrow)

Steel Phantom
"The Steel Phantom is a 165 foot tall rollercoaster. It was built in 1991. The car goes down a height of 225 feet straight through the Thunderbolt going about 80 miles per hour. The ride is now called the Phantom’s Revenge."
To see more old photos and excerpts about the rides click the link:(http://old.bpsd.org/ims/Tech_Ed/8th%20Grade/Webpages_11-12/3rd-9wks_files/PD8/hinson.haley/rides.htm)

Response to "Tokens" by Christopher Turner

          "Tokens", is about the London Foundling Hospital which was established in 1741 for illegitimate and unwanted children. Within in this documentation it talks about the "tokens" that were left with the children in the event that the mothers ever wanted to reclaim the children. Many of these tokens were halves of actual tokens that could be matched up in the future. Most mothers never came back for the children.

          I found this reading very emotional and melancholy. These children purposely left and abandoned by their mothers, mot never to return or even see if the child survived. I felt grief and anger for these children having to grow up without parents and knowing that they were purposely given up, unwanted, how horrible would that be? How dreadful would that feel? It seems inhuman, unfathomable, especially when they had a lottery system introduced where those bringing children picked a colored ball to see if they won the prize of being able to give their child away to the hospital, and all the while the wealthy society ladies and their husbands, who funded the institution, watched. How could you watch people gamble away their children, especially when the winners were those who gave the children away and the losers were those who had to keep them? I found this disturbing and sad. 

          The tokens that the mothers left were, while sad, also intriguing. The items were sometimes strange like the ivory gambling token in the shape of a fish or the crushed thimble, others had more obvious meaning such as the tiny ring with the heart-shaped stone with the inscription that translates to: "He who neglects me loses me." Many of the items I was wanted to know why that item was chosen, what did it mean to the mother? What was its significance? I wanted to know the story of the tokens that now seem just as abandoned and forgotten as the children that once went with them. These small mementos once had meaning and significance, they once were important in some way. It makes you want to know about them, about the significance tied to them and the story that they obviously once had. I want to know about them, I want to know so badly, its difficult holding or seeing something that was once important to someone and not being able to know that importance, the curiosity eats at me, like a hunger that can never be sated.

Mementos; Response to "On Longing" quotes

          Mementos are physical representations of a memory. They are souvenirs of the past and our travels, places we've been and things we have done. It is said that smell is the strongest memory trigger but it is difficult to keep or collect smells, so most collect trinkets or objects. I keep drawers of mementos, little do-dads and thing-a-ma-bobs that remind me of things such as times or places from my childhood. Some of these things still hold a scent that makes the link to the memory even stronger and works as a trigger for that specific memory. Most of these objects look like junk and random pieces of things that should be thrown out and have no use, which is true to people who do not have a connection to them but untrue to the person who collected them for which they are useful objects for traveling back in time to a memory you may have forgot or will eventually forget otherwise. Even for a memory that cannot be forgotten the memento is a physical piece of that memory, a stronger connection, that keeps it from simply being a memory, an intangible thing that we are afraid can dissipate without any anchor to hold us to it or allow us to physically keep it, which is the purpose or use of the memento, an anchor, so that the metaphorical boat cannot drift away on an unseen current before we can grab a hold of it and pull it back. It is a stabilizing method to keep the memory in the physical world and not just the invisible and intangible one of our memory.

Memento Assignment notes and guidelines

Guidelines

• Non-representational sculpture of a memory; person, place, event
• Must use 3 materials,Three shall be the number thou shalt use, and the number of the using shall be three. Four shalt thou not use, neither use thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, thou shall hath completed thy sculpture. 
• Must fit in one or two hands
• Use elements and principles of design to communicate and symbolize the memory

"On Longing" Quotes

• "The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale."
• "Capacity of objects serve as traces of authentic experience."
• "The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature... that which can be enveloped by the body." 
• "Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss."
• "To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy."

Gregor's Room; Paper Sculpture

For Gregor's room I envisioned a small narrow bed with messy stained sheets. Since Gregor was a giant cockroach that climbed on everything I envisioned the bed and furniture covered in sticky footprints and grimey overall.

Box Spring
Rolled and folded paper with black and white ink

Blanket
crumpled paper with blue and white ink
Brown ink marks to create footprint effect

Pillow
Black mixed with white ink
Brown ink marks for footprint effect

Mattress
Black mixed with white ink
Brown ink for stained effect

Headboard
Brown and yellow ink
Brown ink for color and footprint effect
Yellow ink for color and stained effect

Bed set put together

Gregor
Brown mixed with white and yellow ink
Brown ink for dirty and stained effect

Underside of Gregor

Small Dresser
Brown and yellow ink
Brown for color and footprint effect

Window
Brown and white mixed ink for window pane color
Black mixed with white ink used to make dreary city scene

Final product, everything put together