so very unfortunate, one of my spinal cord, brain creations broke right as I was about to document it. Fortunately i have an extra brain and am going to refinish is later on this week. But I did try to recreate the effect on the original connection piece and it is not the same. It looks slightly more bizarre, and still just as scary.
As far as a reflection on the work, I wanted to make them humorous or in a way kind of kitchy. Kind of like something out of a Tim Burton film, where you have no idea how you feel about it but there are parts you like and want to touch but your also pretty confused or grossed out by it at the same time. I also want to create a sort of presentation pillow to go underneath the brain so it looks like this thing thats on the glorified pillow, but also because the one with the red knitted bow, its spine is angled strange and the pillow would correct that.

I also revisited my weaving project and made it into an apron. 

Final

Artist Statement

          I have been working on my senior thesis project for the past couple months and these are images of two of the 4 spaces I am currently finishing up designing.  The top two are of a restaurant and bar and the bottom three are of the first floor lounge.  I decided to develop a plan for an equestrian center based near Baltimore, Maryland.  Based on my research I found that there is a need for a horse park in this area and it would be a viable business,  Some of my goals with the design of these spaces was to make them not feel like the typical barn aesthetic you would normally see and establish an inviting space that would encourage anyone from beginners to well established professional horse back riders to come and compete in this complex. All of these images shown below are still a work in progress and are made with one of the 3D software programs we use in this major.

Artist Statement

I have recently been working on my senior studio thesis project for the end of the year. I decided to design a high end hotel because that has always been an interest of mine. Hotel design is what sparked my interest in interior architecture.

After doing some research I decided to design my hotel in the South Beach Miami. This is a diverse area with a big entertainment scene and it’s know for having a lot of art deco design but more recently they’ve been looking for ways to make the design of the area more contemporary. I went with a minimalist approach with accents of bright colors on the certain walls and furniture. 

Statement Petersilge

So, first off, I’m sorry this is late. I got distracted with the show opening yesterday and this post just slipped my mind. I hope this can still function for points.

My work in this class ended up focusing around the concept of beauty and seduction, and how it can be made dissonant when slightly altered. At the beginning of the term, we watched an art21 segment by Josiah McElheny, and a particular sentence resonated with me, and became a strong influence in how I worked with glass. He describes beauty as being “about a kind of recognition of or sympathy to a kind of order or set of ideas or a set of relationships.”

With this in mind, I set out to make work that questioned that order he speaks of; to have some elements align with our ideas of beauty, but have others question or distort that assertion. The method of the “exquisite corpse” was rich ground for me to explore with the ideas I had in mind, and ended up with an en memoriam piece. The beauty and preservation we associate with our dead is a working example of how our order of beauty can be disturbed. The deer skull I created also reads to this, taking what is normally a trophy item used in taxidermy and hunting, disguising it in a seductive veil of metallic red glass. Last but not least, my gummy bears read to the experience of the expired gummy bear, riddled with dirt and dust from handling and neglect, while still containing a colorful, seductive veneer that entices you to look past the dirt. This is meant to engage the thought of how we as humans look for order, and will attempt to create it in its absence.

statement

Bells represent many things but what I am interpreting them as for this assignment is last call.  Last call is meant for a bar mostly, but last call represents the end of something, anything.  That plus the weaving intertwined will mark the end of an era, and represent the emotions that come with it.

Artist Statement

                                   "Their memory was something tangible and heavy,

                                    and I would carry it with me."

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                            Ransom Riggs

           

My work is an attempt to bring life to the forgotten memories – to the lost letters, to the box of belongings, to the old photographs stuffed away in the attic.

They all have a story to tell. Through this series, I want to revive the story held within them. I am exploring the connection an individual has with their family. I am interested in the notion that you can look at an old photograph of a relative who is long gone – someone you’ve never met – and have a connection with them. You can see their faces and you can be drawn in to their long-gone moments. You can hear their stories so many times that you think you remember being a part of them. We live amongst this collection of glimpses, all while creating our own.

Our lives are shaped by those who came before us. I am influenced everyday, both by the people who raised me and by the ones who didn’t. I will never get to meet the latter. I was born too late.

But I can look at their photographs. I can speak their names. I can take their memories with me. And I can create my own.

Statement

Tyler Mauk

Ascension

                  Human existence, at its core, can be explained as a transfer from life to death. My photographs set out to capture this idea of the spirit being in transition between two bodily forms. The glass represents two sides of existence; life and death. The moment between these two realities becomes a clear and floating movement of the spirit; awaiting its ascension into another form.  The glass not only represents a separation between life and death, but is also the clarity that one experiences in the unconscious state after death.  

Above is my artist statement that goes along with the work presented in my thesis project (also presented above). Aside from the topics explored within my thesis I am also very interested in the visual aesthetics of film, creating images that reference and invoke thought of the moving image and nostalgia.

Statement

Art is a funny thing. On one hand, by making, you are saying something. On the other hand, the environment, composed of objects, materials, content, people, evoke something else. What making means to me is to be doing just that: making. There’s a self-trust that I have gained since I began making art only a couple of years ago. This funny thing does a lot of things, but most of all, it makes me happy. I am interested in negotiating all types of forms of communication. If communication is presented in a form, how far must it go to be abstracted? How hard must someone work to understand it? Maybe trust in the inevitable is the most understood?

For my thesis in Ohio University’s ceramics department, I have focused on a way of making that is as much un-mediated as possible. A pretty simple process lends itself to seeing new things appear. A few sticks are put together and somehow it reminds me of a tomato, a few more remind me of the sun, some over there remind me of a ramp. I see things in the objects that I see around me. My goal is to see something in the work that exists nowhere else.

glass at hocking

Working with glass for the first time was rather enjoyable. At the start of the semester when we were being first introduced to it I was mildly worried. I thought maybe I would bleed a lot but in the end I didn’t bleed at all. Learning about the different types of glass was very interesting and helps me understand the material a little better. Being an interior architecture major we work with glass a lot in our designs. This experience I think has now given me a new outlook on glass and it abilities. The different techniques were also very fun to learn. My favorite had to be the glass mold blowing. That process really helped me understand what it takes to get different forms and pieces of art. I think glass is a medium that takes a lot of time to do and understand fully. Flat glass work was fairly easy to get a hold on and understand. The more I did it the better I got at cutting the glass and the faster I could get done with a piece. All together this glass experience was very enjoyable and I would love to learn more about it and maybe even a few more techniques. -Alex K-

My Glass Experience at Hocking (Petersilge)

My experience with glass was love at first sight. Prior to this class, I had seen my sister work with it before in the reenactment village where she works, and always wanted to try it for myself. The moment my hands touched the first shards of Bullseye that we worked with, I immediately felt a connection. I couldn’t put it down, so I spent much of my time at Hocking completely immersed in working with it, obsessing over every little detail. I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted my pieces to get to the next level. I have always had an affinity for engraving (hence the printmaking major), so the fusing project was a great way for me to start out, combing scraffito techniques with the mosaic quality of glass shards.

The challenge for me came in trying to predict what the frit would do. Hardly a coincidence, I noticed a strong similarity to the process of developing glaze recipes. I wish we had made test tiles of the frit to see how it would behave, as it caused me to have to re-fire my piece multiple times to get the line work outlined correctly. Even that turned into an engaging, problem solving experience for me. Through multiple firings, I was able to accomplish the line quality I desired, while also capturing the piece in the color hues I was searching for.

I know that this will not be the last time I work with glass. Next year I will be in graduate school at Kent, whose facilities I can utilize as well as the University of Akron, where my friends frequent the glass studio. This experience has opened up so many venues for my work to take, and I can’t wait to see where it goes. 

Glass

Working with glass was something I was looking forward too for a while.  Once I got comfortable with the tools and glass it came rather easily.

I thought that there were many disadvantages to this experience.  Being that it was in Hocking, it was very difficult to get out there, once for class and outside of class, and I believe that it did not help my work.  I also think that there were too many people for the amount of machines that are in the room.  Maybe if it were in OU it would be better so that more people could get into the use the machines more often as well as at different times so that it was not as crowded.

However, I think that it was a good learning experience.  I think that the process was cool to learn and to watch. But, it would be nice to have been able to do the processes rather than just watch.  It was fun to use the tools that we were aloud to after the glass cooled down.  I think future classes should continue to do this and hopefully the weather will not get in the way as much so it will be a smother process.

Fiber Game

Artists using traditional process to create sculptural work, first show how an artists it is important to understand the root of sculpturing work, which gives there art meaning and story for the journey of their work. It also indicates appreciation of other artists who started the traditional process and the respect of keeping their methods alive at the same time taking advantage of that knowledge to incorporate in their own work in interesting methods.

Sculpturing with fiber requires skill, mostly wrap and weft used in weaving; advancing the skill of weaving into 3 dimensional craft is very entertaining and interesting. Although the process practiced is craft, which is a hand-exercised skill, it produces amazing artwork using a material  (fiber) that is broad and could be manipulated creatively.

The knowledge learned from weaving shows any material could be creatively used to fulfill the craft of weaving. The materials could range from, straws, ribbons, paper, garbage bags, newspaper, cables, and cardboard, wire, wood, hair and more. With the wide range of materials it gives and artist the opportunity to work broadly in creating all kinds of thought-provoking artwork.

 The work can become evolving tapestry, in different scales. I think artist are taking advantage of weaving since it’s a very traditional process and bring the unimaginable to life. They are making it physical and giving it meaning, connection, this is taking craft to the next level instead of functional, it is visual appreciated with words, vision and touch of texture and feel.

This is what are is about and therefore evolving craft into remarkable art to tell a story makes it valuable and encouraging for the generations following to take advantage of the knowledge and skills, using them to make better art through craft.

Glass Experience

My experience of working with glass clearly made me think of it as a very distinctive material compared to any other materials I have used ion my projects.  I really enjoyed the experience of working with glass because, it gave me the opportunity to be creative and be able to imagine beyond one different state of matter, which is glass can be transformed in to liquid and solid, this alteration makes the experience of working with glass easy and effective.

I was fortunate to work with glass in liquid form and solid form and I would admit it is easier to work with glass in its liquid state. When glass is solid it is a fragile material but it’s not easy to sculpture it takes time and more practice to learn the process skillfully, once one is comfortable it becomes enlightening and the results are worth the hard work.

I also enjoyed the fact I could manipulate glass into different objects and color; the best part is the effect of fully transparency. It was easy to clean and just enjoy the process with out much fear of making mistakes with the material. It was also interesting how glass came indifferent shapes and forms and made it interesting to manipulate.

As much as I praise and adore glass as a material, its unfortunate I didn’t get to learn more about it or I was as well skilled into using the material therefor the work wasn’t perfect, but Its nerve racking that it is a fragile material and very delicately handled since it could be hazardous.