Ticked Off

This has an interesting back story, so prepare thyself... 

This piece was originally inspired by the feeling of frustration when everything is going in circles and all you want is to get out and be productive, but you are trapped under someone else’s stipulation.

I had an art teacher try to pare a junior with a senior in order to help the senior for their senior art show, which is fine... except she also expected us to produce work while we were helping the other people. In short after a very long frustrating day I came back to the art room, (mind you, I am probably one of the most sane people in there) and I grab a sheet of paper and an xacto-knife and start going at it with the knife. It developed over time into a scratch pattern, so I took a sculpting medium and created a hand that would be scrapping at the paper. After meticulously covering it with tape I grabbed concentrated watercolor and started flinging the paint at the paper. It may have also gotten all over everything else in the vicinity ... and stained a chair ... but that is besides the point. 

I throughly enjoyed myself, scared the living daylights out of my classmates and had a first time experience being one of "those crazy art students that always try to express their feelings".

Design. Discover. Create.

AMB

Stress Cup

The project was to create a cup that exemplified an emotion. At this point in the semester I was tired of trying to continuously come up with new and original ideas and I was stressed out about my classes. i felt the emotion I could best demonstrate was stress, since I was very familiar with the feeling. 

The cup itself represents life, the cracks- which were specifically craved into the clay, they did not just "happen"- are all of the problems that come up in life that we try to deal with. The finger prints that were sculpted / pressed in represent the remanence of someone who was trying so hard to keep their life together they were crushing, almost suffocating, themselves to try to keep it together. 

Its interesting how old art projects change in meaning as you mature as a person. I recently just started college. It all started ok. And then home life took several turns I was not expecting. I spent two months trying to stuff my emotions to get through the semester and just chose to pretend that everything was ok. No one knew me enough to know that I was acting unusual, honestly not that anyone cared. It is interesting to look back at what I thought was difficult and know what I know now. It is useless to hold onto what is cracking at the seams.

Design. Discover. Create.

AMB