Millennium Woman

For my individual project, I'm making a life size bust with both audio and video components. This piece is part of a series that I've been working on that is about different aspects of women portrayed through various types of sculptures. The bust is was formed using a dress form and wire mesh to shape the structure and then covered with tissue paper and decoupage. After taking the sides off the dress form I then covered the inside with more tissue paper. Once the 2 pieces are strong enough, I'm then going to put stereo and electrical wires along with parts from inside a radio on the inside. After everything is put together, a flat 7" inch screen TV or DVD player will be placed inside the bust. The screen will be blank with white noise and the audio will be of everyday sounds.

This piece is a continuation of a previous piece I did several years ago for my senior show at Herron. The piece wasn't as successful as I had hope for because that was the 1st time I had made a sculpture with an image transfer. The image came out great, but the sculpture, not so great. I've never taken a sculpture class before, so I used handmade paper and acrylic extending gel that is added to acrylic paint as my glue and formed the shape of the bust using the dress form. The bust over time had collapsed and I was really interested in this form and applying paper to shape it. So I began to think about how I could improve this piece. After experimenting a little, I found out that the wire mesh was easy to manipulate over the dress form and the many layers of tissue paper and decoupage made the structure stronger to be a free standing wall mount.

Questions to Answers

What inspires you?
Anything and everything around me. The kind of day I have could inspire me, the emotion that I'm feeling in a particular moment, a particular experience I'm having, other artists, images I see.

What is sacred to me?
Life, memories, and experiences that one would go through in a life-time; whether they are positive or negative. Your experiences shape who you are and who you become.

What is music?
Various sounds put together rhythmically to create a harmony.

What is an image?
A visual that is produced mentally.
Or I like to say "Visual Memories"

What is New Media?
Design that is produced through audio, video, and animation.

Who are you?
This is a question that I've struggled with for many years, and still struggle with a times. Most of my work up until now have been about finding my voice and how society has shaped me as an artist and a woman. Just until recently, I've finally crawled out from this tiny little whole from where I didn't create any artwork, because I had to learn how let go of a lot of anger. I did this by tiring up most of my undergraduate work, which was very liberating. I can now say that I've moved on in my work and feel that I making more meaningful work now and I'm able to combined my fine art and new media skills. I've been given a 2nd chance in learning and feel that I have become a better and stronger artist for years to come. As for the my torn work, I kept it in a big bag and will be used in a project in the near future.

Why did you choose to go into new media?
After crawling out of that whole, I knew that it was time to go back to school, because I needed to build upon my fine art skills. My original degree at Herron was Visual Communications, but realized that I didn't like their program, so I went into Photography, which I discovered as a way for me to communicate. But I still had the desire to design, so after graduating 3 years ago, I decided to finish my degree in graphic design, but didn't want to go to Herron again. That's when I discovered the New Media program last year and loving it.

How has this class impacted you and your approach to new media? Have you seen any changes in your approach to projects or how you think about new media?
This class started my creative juices flowing and I now have 3 big projects in mind, which one of them is my individual project and the other 2 are still in their early stages of creation. I really enjoy this class and it too brings back memories of Herron. Many of my classes at Herron where taught in this manner and I find it very freeing and easily to create. This class is very rejuvenating.

Egg Bomb

So my egg project didn't come out the way I wanted, but I went home and started to think how I could redo the project. I started thinking about other ways of making the egg transparent, which was my original idea, but wasn't really sure how to do it. I then started to think about what kind of transparent materials I have and what could I do with it. I then remembered that I had acrylic gel medium that is added to acrylic paint for texture and is super heavy and can be used to create a free-standing sculpture. The 1st try wasn't successful. So I'm now going to try to paint it on to the egg and put a plastic bag inside the egg filled with maybe a transparent gel or maybe clear candle wax with a seed pod inside. If that doesn't work maybe decoupage. Still in the experimental stage. Pictures will follow.

5 Senses

So I went and watched Spiderman 3, even though some of my friends had said they didn't like it as much as the other 2, and I have to kind of agree that it wasn't as good as the others. Anyways, when I opened the door to the theater the smell of popcorn hit me. It seems like it fills the entire theater, no matter where you go, the smell of popcorn is everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I love the smell of popcorn, but I couldn't really smell anything else, because it was really dominate. Then the people sitting in front of me, had carmel popcorn, which smelled really good! But it kind of smelled like vanilla or coffee instead of carmel, but then again I wasn't in a coffee shop!

I changed going out to eat to eating outside at lunch while at work.
As I sit outside enjoying the warm sunny breeze, I begin to hear many things. I'm sitting in front of the library on campus, and I was kind of hoping that it was a little more quite. I wanted to hear my surrounds instead of hearing people around me, but hey it is a campus, what can you expect. As I sit there eating my lunch, I can hear a plane overhead, a motorcycle going by, cars passing by on Michigan, the roar of construction off to the distance, someone passing by on a bicycle, another person talking on their cell phone, swinging doors in the library, someone returning books in the book return, and last of all someone who comes out of the library singing (very badly)! Great lunch though!!

Going to the grocery store.
All weekend long I have been craving for some mint chocolate chip ice cream, so I go into the store with my list of things I need, but all the while thinking of ice cream. I can just taste it now. I'm marking off my list and checking down the aisles making sure I wasn't forgetting anything before I go to the freezer section!! As I'm walking to the freezer section the taste is getting stronger and I reach the section where they keep the mint chocolate chip ice cream, and they are all out of mint chocolate chip!!! I was so looking forward to that first bit when I got home and they're all out, so I had to go with my 2nd choice cookies n' cream. I go through the check out lane and I'm thinking about ice cream as I walk to my car and all the way home. I get home and I open that sucker up and scoop one spoon full and take a bit and it tasted so good, I can now put away the rest of the groceries. I had my fix of ice cream!!

My day begins w/my alarm clock buzzing, waiting for me to turn it off and I felt like sleeping in a little longer, but I didn't. I'm then greeted by my cat Lilly, who makes a little grunt and kind of glides by my leg as she runs into the room. I make my breakfast and drink my coffee hoping to wake up and feel refresh and ready for the day. It doesn't happen, so I drag my ass into the shower and I finally wake up as the warm water hits me. I then finish getting ready for work and as I'm getting ready I thinking what I want to put into my lunch. I make my lunch and head on out the door. The sun is out and its kind of warm and I get into my car. I think about popping in a CD and think na, I'll listen to the radio. I turn the radio on, but there's only talking on the radio, so I turn it off and continue to drive until I get to work. Then I start my day.

The Substitue Egg

I tried to figure out how to my egg home without breaking it, so I put it in the cup holder in the car and made it safely home. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the egg yet, so I put it in the fridge with a red X to identify it from the other eggs. Long and behold the next day, it was tossed out with the rest of the eggs, because the fridge had died on us. I thought I would replace it with another egg, but then decided not to and use other materials to make the egg.

I finally came up with an idea on what I was going to do with the egg, so I got the materials out and went with the idea and began to experiment. I wanted to have some sort of time reference inside the egg and then used clay to sculpt the shape of the egg. The end result.... not so great, the concept was better then the end product.