The End of Year One

I can’t believe the semester is already over! But I’m feeling proud about the work I did in these past final months, and my installation for final critiques turned out how I envisioned. I spent the past week getting the installation together, documenting it, and (lots and lots of) editing images on photoshop. Behind the scenes, I’ve also been working hard on my NCECA show proposal.

It was fun to test out a soundscape in my installation as well. I made it relatively quickly (though it took a while to get that part of my brain working again, after not working with Audacity for a few years), and it definitely wasn’t perfect, but it opened up a conversation in critiques about how an audible atmosphere can change the overall mood and intent of the work. My cohorts shared that they felt the sounds were creepy, alien, and intrusive, which wasn’t my initial intention, but I am intrigued by the idea of subjecting my audience to sound as they experience my work. I think if my speakers were slightly quieter that the soundscape would’ve been perceived as more ambient than intrusive. I’d like to find a balance between alien and familiar/natural, intrusive and ambient. I’ll keep playing with this in future installations.

I also received critiques about my wire cables being too mechanical/industrial juxtaposed to my forms. I’ll need to find a way to tone them back in future installs, either with paint or some sort of casing. I also found out that I could’ve hung them from a wider grid, higher up in the Spacelab ceiling space, instead of the two crossbars that I hung the majority of them from. That way, they could’ve been suspended in the center of the space so that viewers could see them from all angles and not just the “front”. I feel a little stupid for not figuring that out on my own, but at least now I know. GH has suggested that I make my own grid for suspending work, and I think eventually I’ll do this, so I can show these pieces in various gallery spaces without worrying about having to adapt to their grids/ceilings.

This installation feels like a good place to leave my Propriocepta series at while I work on summer projects. I’ve been invited back to the Cannon River Clay Tour as an emerging artist, so I need to make a batch of functional work before August. I also plan to start another big monument very soon, and to start testing out different high alumina clay bodies for the future.

Bring on the summer!