Sunday, July 4, 2010

invisible: jen's process

oohh man i have so many ideas for this i don't know what direction to take! invisible could be a state, a feeling, it could be used to describe an emotion... the lack of something... blindness...

hum! well at the moment i'm really interested in the meaning connected to medium. i've been considering doing a sculpture blindfolded for this one, relying completely on the sense of touch rather then sight to capture the sense of invisble. i was inspired to take this approach after learning that towards the end of his career, degas turned to sculpture as he started to loose his eyesight.
what i'm stuck on is what to sculpt. obviously sculpting a blind person might be a bit too cheesy...



on the subject of blindness, about a year ago i found this great book called 'the black book of colours.' its all in black, with english and braille, and the pictures are linear and slightly raised so you can explore them with your fingers. it describes a blind child's defintion of colours.

here is some text from the book :

Thomas likes all the colors because he can hear them and smell them and touch them and taste them.
But black is the king of all the colors. It is as soft as silk when his mother hugs him and her hair falls in his face.


the concept of this book is so beautiful, and i love the idea of exploring the non-visual qualities of visual terms.

with this train of thought i'm off to go sketch!


WEDNESDAY:

Holly, this was such a hard challenge! i temporarily abandoned my sculpture idea, and fiddled for what felt like days on other concepts. i went to curry's in search of a miracle medium to solve the solution, and the girl working there recommended that i try painting with clear modeling gel on top of plexi glass. sounds cool! so i tried it, but soon realized that with this medium it's better to let it be what it is, rather then try to control the texture. somehow ending up with an invisible abstract painting was a little too fine-artsy for me lol.

so i turned to sketching again, had an okay drawing... but by this point i really just wanted to sculpt. so curry's, 2 pounds of clay, and a blindfold, i was ready to start.

i love it! i can't wait to post. it was the most fun 15 minutes of art i've ever had. i kept the time short because i was afraid i'd blindly overwork it. i think with sculpture its always better to have it raw then overworked.

3 comments:

  1. Hmmmm bravo... I never thought about blind sculpting for solving this challenge! I think I might like this! What to sculpt will indeed be difficult, showing invisible (or blindness) especially wont be easy!

    Holly

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  2. i have that book, it's totally beautiful

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  3. Hmmmm... proud of you for trying the painting with clear modeling gel on top of plexi glass, I’m curious to see how that turned out (guessing it wont photograph nicely.) It makes me very happy that you chose fifteen minutes of modeling clay blindfolded. I’m very eager to see what you’ve come up with, why can’t it be Friday today?

    Holly

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