Final Assignment-WINDOW TABLE

When I was told we could create anything for the final assignment I was confused??? Anything?!? Quickly what followed however was excitement, I would keep the theme of making a useful product, I have really enjoyed collaborating with my amazing mom (who doesn't realize she herself is an artist) on my assignments using her woodworking skills and ideas. In the beginning I wanted to make a coffee table out of an old door, however I went to the rebuild center and found no doors that I liked but I did find a WINDOW so the project turned to a more useful design for my house a side table out of a window a WINDOW TABLE. I had never previously been to any rebuilding centers which were amazing and I want to continue to visit them and come up with funky reusable designs from different materials. This side table actually will help me solve a problem as well, one that will cure an anxiety of mine about spilling things drinks primarily on the coffee table which my computer sits on and so currently we place all liquids on the floor however this creates even more spills due to the fact the drink is now closer to a foot in which it can be kicked and so often does, on a very expensive rug. So this side table will give me a place to put my morning coffee while I do my early morning Internet browsing and solve many current spilling anxieties of mine. All of which stem from my mother, the spilling anxieties I mean. Side note-I used to spill alot of milk on my moms antique dinner table and then had to clean it and oil the wood, this is a very difficult task as a little kid. I now have sequences in my head where I can see things spilling before they even happen-not a psycho promise just a little anxious- the end

artist statement

It took a long time for me to think of myself as an artist. Being raised by professional Jazz musicians and visial artists, I've grown up in a constantly creative environment. I've always made art in my spare time, but it was only a year ago (right around the beginning of last summer when, after three years of college, I realized that I probably should have been an art major all along) that I really started to think of myself that way. Over the past year, I've developed my ideas about what an artist is and what I want to be with my art. I've expanded my skillset in many ways. I've mainly gravitated towards painting and metal-work. In my painting, I have always felt very connected to Natural inspirations, in particular botanical subjects and the symbolism of trees. But though I love to paint, I derive the most joy from working with metals, and hope to design my art major around the goal of gaining training in this area of art. I have learned how to solder, cast, fabricate, and use the power of heat to create some really cool effects in the metal, and I could spend hours in the studio playing with design ideas. My hope is to develop my skills in both jewelry and small scale metal-smithing, and larger sculptural work. I'm still waiting to see where my art takes me, but whether I put these skills to use as a working artist or simply use them for the purposes of my own enjoyment, I know I have something that will always make me happy.

Ode to a Memory (assignment 4)

Mhm.....

So after a jolt I decided to post stuff in my blog, it has writings n it about my art work, I know I need to put more work into it but yeah.... It has a new post about the scroll I made for class and a new post about a installation piece I made this term for another class. Read it if you want I think its interesting but that's just me, I find the most mundane things to be interesting.

http://meandrouswords.blogspot.com/

so look at it yalls, or there will be ninjas!!!

-Lila

everyone remember to wear socks on thursday (unless you want to put your bare foot into a bowling shoe)

hey guys,
when we got assignment 5 my first thought about what i would do if i could do anything i wanted was to apply to this fellowship at this summer long artist's school. basically if you get the spot, you get to live there for the entire summer, have a studio, access to all visiting artists, and a small paying job, instead of just paying many many dollars to take a two week class.
so i actually did it! which is a pretty big deal. the application consisted of images of your work and a letter of intent, letter of recommendation and your resume. everyone who has applied for the spot before has mailed in those things to the office, but i created a blog instead. i have no idea if they'll ever look at my blog, and i've never had any hope that i'll actually get the fellowship from the beginning. but the process of sitting down and making a portfolio was really great for me, and i wanted to share it with you guys and get any feedback that you have at all (typos, questions, suggestions, critiques, etc). i'm going to leave it as it is for a little while, giving the oxbow people time to look at it, and after that i have a really great start to having my own artist's website that i can use as a tool until the internet becomes obsolete or 2012 or whatever.

http://crystalbaxley.wordpress.com

the program i applied for: http://www.ox-bow.org/residency/fellowship.html

assignment 4 documentation

photo credits to k.south

assignment 3 documentation

here is the video from the powerpoint that i made about assignment 3:

LONG OVERDUE pictures

Yay! I finally have access to a camera again! So, these are long overdue pictures from assignments 2 and 3. Everything is from assignment 3 except the pictures of the bottle, which are assignment 2. My cats were very intrigued. :)

final assignment

rendering of my lamp that is under construction.

I've been weaving, or more accurately, sewing pine needle baskets for many years. Growing up in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon, I was surrounded by the long pine needles shed yearly by the Ponderosa Pine trees. There were so many of them! I can't remember where I first saw a pine needle basket, but I was fascinated and amazed that something beautiful could be made from all those darned pine needles. I took a class at the local community college and learned to make the traditional pine needle basket.

Over the years I've challenged myself to go beyond the traditional methods and designs. I found that any shape can be achieved using pliable wet pine needles, wire, raffia, and a little imagination. I've made roses to use as handles on lids; I've made a fruit basket filled with pears and apples; my latest is a tide-pool with a star fish.

This basket goes further away from the design and construction of a traditional pine needle basket. The star fish at the base is a 3 dimensional piece that has a wire skeleton to provide strength and form the star fish. Using raffia I filled in between the wire with a basket weave. The remainder of the base of the basket was done with the traditional coil basket construction. For the sides of the basket I wanted to create the energy of the waves crashing over the tide pool. I wanted to create a sense of rolling motion, turbulence, and the weathering effect waves would have on rocks. To do this I needed to move away from the uniformity of coil construction. For the sides of the basket, I made odd circular/oval shapes and sewed them directly to the basket. I would then continue working a basket coil over that shape anchoring each piece as I went. Rather then building the basket one coil at a time, I would introduce new coils wherever I needed them. The result is an asymmetrical basket which represents the chaos of turbulence, tides, and weathering. At the base is the star fish which is centered in a uniform back ground which could represent the stillness of a deep pool.

Making this basket by far has been the most challenging!

ORCHID PORN

http://orchidporn.tumblr.com

For my final project, I have designed and curated a blog dedicated to the most diverse flower on planet Earth, the orchid. There are 25,000 species of orchid, and a lot of them, if not all, evoke a sexual energy when viewed up close. I have always thought orchids were beautiful, exotic and most of all, slightly out of reach. Their care is something for the obsessive, being high-maintenance mostly-tropical finicky flowers. I wanted to look more closely at the different varietals of this family of plants, and in my research started collecting so many beautiful photographs. Orchid breeders and keepers are not only obsessive with the care, but also the documentation of their plants. Thus a treasure-trove of fascinating, somewhat vaginal photos of flowers was revealed to me online.

I made this blog as an orchid lover for orchid lovers. It is pornography in the sense that I love these purely aesthetic, functionless flowers, but further it is porn due to the graphic macro documentation orchid lovers take of their seducers. By focussing on the image of the flower, this blog is a porn rag for the hardcore orchidaceae nerd, and hopefully a gateway drug to new-found orchid lovers. I have learned so much about the many, many species and have tried to tag each photo taxonomically, to better remember the names. So many beautiful names!

Robert Mapplethorpe was in many ways my avenue to approaching this as an art piece. His photographs of orchids (often pictured with nude men) revealed the sensual nature of these plants to me. I cannot recommend Mapplethorpe enough to those interested in photography.

I also visited the NW Orchid Exhibition and Sale this weekend and bought my first orchid, a Pahopedilum Maudiae 'Oriental Enchantment x Supersuk' ladyslipper orchid ready to bloom. I see a long future ahead of ever-growing obsessiveness with orchids. I wanted to put this info up online now so that you could look at the blog before class this week. I hope you enjoy it, I have enjoyed making it, and if you love orchids please follow the blog, it will be updated A LOT.

LV

KS

Things I mentioned in class

Andy:

Here is the site to the public art space that I though Assumption would fit perfectly!

http://racc.org/public-art/installation-space 

    

Bill: 

The movie was Man With The Movie Camera ( The entire movie is on you tube, but heres the link to the first part)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDXgcBQVJCw

So this is a video roughly based on the memory of my first kiss. More than that though, it is a reflection on love and what it means. I have been thinking about that too much lately and making something this simple, as far as plot, was really helpful for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nAwR44tIpE

here is the early architectural timeline I made for my Dads buildings.

Story behind this piece is that I wanted to show my appreciation for my parents. I am adopted and have always felt great gratitude that they were there to take care of me when my birth mother couldn't. For a long time I would want to buy them gifts or in some other form show my appreciation through things I payed for, but I feel that something like this is much more meaningful.

In the future I hope to make a similar piece but to incorporate the faces of both my birth and adoptive parents.

Just for fun here is the original picture:

Printmaking info

Here is some more info on relief printing. This is the process we usually do with the Print Factory.

assignment 4 final picture

This is the picture of the finished assignment. I used acrylic paints to paint the paper mache hills.

assignment 4

Here are the images from assignment 4. I made two new cactuses. One of which is in the peice. The other was not ready in time. I used fabric stiffener on burlap (one of the suggestions from someone in class) and put that into the cactuses. I also used the fabric stiffener to make a hill shape and I paper mached over it. I just need to get a picture of it painted for the final image. I like it now. I like the concept of lots and lots of wire cactuses and might do some drawings and etchings of that next quarter.

Assignment 4 : Childhood Home From Memory

assignment 4

pictures of working on my painting (evidence, lol)