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Final Index

1. Materials in the World 

https://mylesw.tumblr.com/post/682639881380429824/materials-in-the-world

2. Materials in the World: Research 

https://mylesw.tumblr.com/post/682639934638718976/materials-in-the-world-research

3. Material Translation: Final 

https://mylesw.tumblr.com/post/682626284066684928/materials-translation-final-untitled-3-ft-x-4-ft

5. QCQ #2: X Marks The Spot

https://mylesw.tumblr.com/post/680159456688996352/x-marks-the-spot-allen-mccollum-qcq

8. Redo/Undo - The Cannibalized Object: Research

https://mylesw.tumblr.com/post/682640109087195136/redoundo-the-cannibalized-object-research

9. Redo/Undo - The Cannibalized Object: Final

https://mylesw.tumblr.com/post/682629191608532993/the-cannibalized-object-final-animated-two-2-x

11. Soft: Final 

https://mylesw.tumblr.com/post/682630680762564608/soft-final-untitled-2-x-4-ft-a-rectangular

12. Final PDF Portfolio

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ID60hXcS4zpXITmIHzPMy-DL8DkF5KAoTCw14Ph5p8Y/edit?usp=sharing

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Redo/Undo - The Cannibalized Object: Research

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Materials in the World: Research

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Materials in the World

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Soft: Final

Untitled

2 x 4 ft

A rectangular structure made from thin cut piece of wood drilled together and wrapped with red polyester that I cut 48 rectangles out. I tied red wire throughout the structure to hold another rectangle of fabric inside that I inserted a light in the center of. The sculpture was to resemble a concrete building filled with windows with light going to through them to make the building seem active. I addition to that I added city ambience to further my narrative of the piece. Being that the prompt was about softness I came up with the idea to reference something like a large, concrete building out of a very soft, fragile fabric. I felt the idea would be a good contradiction. Going back to displaying geometric shapes, this time multiple of those shapes through fabric and illuminating this sculpture from the inside and casting the shapes of all the windows I cut out. I went with a more domestic or architectural route after considering previous discussions of monumentalism and anti monumentalism similar to the work of the Korean artist Do Ho Suh.

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The Cannibalized Object: Final

“Animated”

Two 2 x 2 ft wood sculptures

I collected wood from my former projects as well as wood from other student’s works which I cut into pieces in different angles and shapes as a way of making the wood look more like scrap. I used to the pieces of wood to create human looking figures with realistic looking gestures by drilling and railing pieces together to . I hung a light in between them to cast their shadows further giving them lifelike qualities and I had the light bulb swing back and forth in order to have the shadows of the figures move as if they were alive and both reaching for this light out of curiosity. I wanted to tell a story of giving life to something that was nothing but leftover scrap and showing how that life or lives to would react once they were able to. The process of making the figures were similar to making buildable toy sets I used to have back when I was a child, a process I enjoyed a lot and creating this sort of gave me that feeling again.

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Materials Translation: Final

Untitled

3 ft x 4 ft

8 chopped up 2 x 4s connected by drilling together the top and bottom ends and tying the middle ends with wire. I spray painted the wood with 2 different shades of red and 1 yellow. I bought a flat round piece of wood, cut 2 rings out of that and sprayed that yellow as well. I hung a cord with a light bulb through the center of the sculpture to illuminate inside and cast long shadows outside. I hung it I wanted to have a nice simple shape completely different from what I usually do which is bodily figures so I chose a diamond like shape as well as adding those 2 ring to display simple geometric shapes. The different colors of paint were to further push the image of light and shadows, yellow inside and dark red outside. I chose warm colors since typically use blue and to match with the wam light I was using .

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Actions to Relate to Oneself: Final

Untitled

4 ft x 17 inches

Rebar and sheet metal welded together, wrapped with cotton fabric and tied with wire. I wanted to weld the rebar in skeletal, bodily shape which I would cover with fabric to represent skin. I chose the verb “to wrap” so I wrapped by figure in fabric and I bended and shaped the figure to look as if it were cold which made the fabric seem fitting. The fabric I chose was a bit thick but I liked the color it had because it somewhat resembled skin. So it was if I created this metal robotic looking being and clothed it to keep it warm. I welded pieces of sheet metal to certain body’s of the figure so they would resemble defining parts of the body that would be seen under the fabric as it stretches and pulls around the body . After that I added red and blue wires to hold the fabric onto the sculpture and also to resemble veins throughout the body to further resemble human like qualities. I wanted the piece to feel organic and inorganic.

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Kitchen Pedestal Sink Problem Final

Titled “Added On”

A 4 x 1 1/2 ft 7 layer pedestal consisting of chicken wire, plaster, wood, styrofoam, floor corking, cardboard, and pages from an encyclopedia.

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1000 Elements Final

“The Artistic Manifesto of Matt Door”

8 in x 12 in

A sketchbook marked, cut, carved partially shredded to create a narrative about an angry artist. The front and back were designed using simple shapes that resembled an angry face. The cuts along the sides were done to portray a bit of violence but also to make it seem as if something was clawing it’s way out of the book. The pages were cut and carved in the shape of someone’s face from a side profile, i shaped it to look as if someone was yelling and the excess pieces of paper were cut into the shapes of teeth and I scattered them outward from the bottom of the book where the open mouthlike shape was. Some of the pages has scribbles of angry faces and tue center page is a contrasting depiction of the artist calmly smoking out which I figured most artists do from time to time. I wanted to give this work a story that I figured most artists would understand or even relate to. A story about an artist who was because no one understood his work and he felt like he wasn’t getting anywhere so he takes a sketchbook and puts all his anger and frustrations into it.

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X Marks The Spot - Allen McCollum QCQ

“Although he never, himself, pushed his own concerns with entropy into the actual making of casts, Robert Smithson had always considered casting as a way of theorizing entropy, since he had written about the earth’s crust as itself a giant cast, the testimony to wave after wave of cataclysmic forces compressing and congealing life and all the spatial intervals necessary to sustain it. Quoting Darwin’s remark “Nothing can appear more lifeless than the chaos of rocks,” Smithson treasured the geological record as a “landslide of maps,” the charts and texts of the inexorable process of cooling and death. For each rock, each lithic band is the evidence of whole forests, whole species that have decayed—“dying by the millions” —and under the pressure of this process have become a form of frozen eternity.”

Comparing and explaining how the earth’s crust is a cast over itself that’s been compressed by the pressure of enormous waves that conceal and freeze millions of lifeforms in itself to me is a very interesting take because it is beautiful and artistic in a natural sort of way but also true in how casting works, the earth’s cast is just done on a large and organic scale. It sort of changes my outlook on casting and the process if it. I also like his quote from Darwin about the chaos of rocks being lifeless and thinking about it I find it to be true and somewhat profound. Rocks move, shape, destroy and reshape the world all while displaying no essence of life. My take on that is that the chaos of rocks are a nonliving force that helps to create, destroy, and change earth’s make up as well as the life around it. It’s important to remember that these rocks actually are casts of the life they took, fossils for example.

Are casts made organically by nature and the earth all that different from the casts we make using clay and water? Is this artistic process really found in nature? And what about us, are we inorganically doing the same process or is this a bit of a coincidence? Are fossils just Earth’s organic casts of its former inhabitants?

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wZ7WDrPlDPf3_SnwR3z10JSzkJFF0aV43rbIA5QjU6U/edit

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Das Sockelproblem QCQ

“Unlike the frame, the base has not attracted comparable attempts to bring it into the present, even though it functions in many respects as the sculptural equivalent of the frame: whereas the frame delimits the picture on the wall and separates it from the wall, the pedestal isolates the object from the space around it. The pedestal creates a base for its object, removes it from the floor and sets it in relation both to the architecture and to the beholder. Like the frame, which is associated with the idea of the picture as a window, the pedestal mediates between the space of representation and the real space. Both frame and pedestal, then, are enframings or devices that create distance, indicate a situation of presentation and initiate aesthetic engagement with what is on display.”

I hadn’t thought about a frame being the pictorial version of a pedestal or a pedestal being a sculptural equivalent of a frame until I read this. The writer breaks down the functions and fundamentals of the two very well and helps you to understand just how similar they in the art world. Its interesting though seeing as pedestals apparently don’t “attract” as much as the frame, my only guess would be the overall simplicity of a frame versus a pedestal which can be quite large and/or heavy. Personally I really like the how describes the workings of a pedestal and how it has spacial manipulation. Holding a piece off the floor and off the wall, having its own space to occupy.

Do you think frames and pedestals are really that similar in artistic functionality? Have pedestals seriously not attracted enough attention to be brought into the present? And if so then why? Are people not as interested in them creatively? Is creating, designing them somewhat of a lost art in the modern day? Personally, after reading this i’m a bit interested in pedestals now, but what do you think?