Phase III

ok, so, I have been thinking about that video we saw on andy goldsworthy, and ever since then I have been staking sites outside where I could go "play". I have decided that I want to work in this style of environmental art for the last phase. I really have been yearning to do this type of art for a while and seeing that video and seeing him just having the time of his life just playing outside really hit a chord with me. I remember feeling that freedom, of just going outside to play. You would think , hmm, ok, now Im outside, no TV, what do I do now? I liked going exploring. I liked to go to the beach with friends and carve the marble vains out of the boulders, I liked making forts in the woods, I liked searching for pretty(complete) shells and sea glass, I liked making face paint with rock powders that I had crushed myself. I remember being able to do those things, having the time to do those things. It made me happy, the cold didnt bother me, and time seemed wholly well spent and purposeful. I remember having to stop doing those things, not altogether, but there wasnt time anymore. school was too busy, boys took up mind space, and soon enough, none of my friends wanted to join in with me and so I abandoned "playing outside". this was probably the start of who I have become, and i came to massart to get away from that person who does those things which are too grown up to make any real sense, and to get back to who I am doing the things that I want to do. so I feel I must go play outside.

some SERIOUS influences by Andy Goldsworthy are:

nonwestern

I am on a huge standstill on my project. I really took some advice to heart after the first "peer critic" last Tuesday, and decided to stear away from the obvious Day of the Dead symbol (the skeletons) and make the celebration more my own.
In the past my family has researched dragonflies being represented in Native American culture as souls of the dead. It has now become an ongoing symbol for my brother and many more loved ones lost. I thought dragonflies would be a perfect skeleton to my altar. So, I bought some really nice paper and wire, and brought all of the materials to my parents house to get started. I failed miserably, because the glue I used was very unnattractive, and the sculptures stuck to the newspaper I left them on! I went for a second round and came up with some decent little wire and paper sculptures. I just can't really figure out how to put everything together.
I can't exactly decide out how to paint the ground of the tunnel either...I keep going back and forth between making it look like sand with footprints (sort of like the prayer), or making look like water. This project is becoming more of a chore now than it was in the beginning, but I feel as if I haven't finished one full, enticing project yet this semester and I would love to do that with this one because I felt so good about the first step.

progress- 2nd phase

My progress on my project has been great. I decided to represent everything between the Buddhist and the Olmec/Aztec through abstract form, but not solely through patterns I have been using. It is a 3D piece, whose measurements and content of construction symbolize the piece. I decided to use coco bolo Rosewood from the Oaxaca can area, Southern Mexico, and Pad auk wood as well as Lignum Vitae, both trees from Asia, Fruit trees. When I chose these woods to work with, it was mostly based on looks. the Cocobolo wood is a masterpiece by itself, the grain is amazing, but I quickly found out how hard of a wood it is, as well as the Lingum Vitae, fruit trees are the hardest woods there are. so working with the material has been harder than I thought. I have the pieces cut out, but now that I have gotten to this point I realize that I made a mistake by not beveling my edges first, now it will be hard to cut each individual piece. I need some help from the wood shop, maybe they can recommend something. I could use the band saw. It will take a while, but thats ok. So Im thinking that I might need more time.

Process 10/22-29

>>Click on each box for notebook sketches<<




I am working on a pyramid box. It has dimensions specific to my own Olmec cosmological interpretation. I am making a 20 sided polygonal box which opens out from the top and the sides fall away into a star shape. Inside the box will be a small sand painting. I am not sure whether I want to use the idea of labrynth, or a tree design I developed.

the ideas centered around this piece are Olmec concepts of world-making, world-centering, and world-renewing. These concepts of cosmovision specific to this culture seem to appear in the eastern part of the world, like Tibet, as well and even though they did not develop even near each other with even possible contact, there exists similar ideas expressed visually, through religion and through the structure of daily life.

the pyramid box has 20 sides,each triangle piece having angle side measurements of 18 degrees. 20 (hands and feet-> Human element) and 18 (multiple of 3 ->all important #, and 180>>360, etc.) the other importance of 20 and 18 is through the Olmec Long Count Calendar (c. 31 bce), It combines the solar 365 day calendar with the sacred 260 day calendar, it is broken up into 18 months of 20 days. 18x20=360->circumference of a circle. Circles are important because they represent a constant, a pattern of existance and development which keeps going, as in a cycle. Cycles are important because they embody the 3 concepts of olmec cosmology and they also seem to embody similar ideas within Buddhist culture.

"Made from sand, paint or even sculpted yak butter, mandalas are visual prayers, celestial renderings of Buddhist symbology. The painstaking process of making a mandala—literally grain by grain—is met at completion with a lesson on the impermanence of life. After it has been properly blessed, the mandala is traditionally swept up and deposited in the nearest body of flowing water.
The sand traditionally used in mandalas is made from crushed limestone, which provides a particle that is fine enough for exquisite detail. a blueprint for this rendering of the schematic diagram of the Buddhist cosmos.A mandala is essentially a diagram for the Buddhist hierarchy. rendered through abstract symbol, occupies the central position. surrounded by four celestial gates, which mark the cardinal directions. Various aspects of spiritual and human existence ring the celestial palace, ranked from the sacred to the profane." --

http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/buddhism/the-story.cfm

cleaning up ideas

I have been working out a plan for what I want this project to look like. I have decided to make a 20 sided polygonal box, It will contain a sand painting, I will be looking toward the east for mandala styles as well as the Aztec for their aerial directional compositions. I also want to make a plaster wall sculpture of line patterns which are a hybridization of Mesoamerican shapes and Japanese line compositions/ and writing(or calligraphy). so I guess what I want to create is a like a gallery installation.

Exhibition: Mexico

I went to the Mexico exhibit way back when, I'm just now writing about it. first, I was coming from Beat Research, and we were there to listen to the Cumbia music that they were playing. I guess Cumbia music is a mixture of Mexican and Mexican/ American Latino dance music. It was definitely cool, you could hear it all the way from public safety! there was a woman/ Mexican woman, she was lovely, and she was lost. I was in Tower about to make my way through the maze over to South Hall. So I took her with me. it was funny, she kept saying how she never would have been able to find it otherwise.

So the exhibit was all of this poster art/ paintings and public art that people just create in Mexico, I thought it was awesome because there were so many different ways, or subjects in which people were expressing themselves they seemed to be responding to their environments, and there were some pretty famous characters displayed. It was interesting because the copy write laws there are slim to none, so drawing these characters in a public forum wasn't a problem.

I loved the WWII aspect to the art. It was like the movie posters and propagannda posters from the 40's that are so wonderfully vintage. But then you would see these raw-ish type paintings that were almost like graffiti art, in fact they are graffiti art. I thought the whole exhibit was great, great vibe, atmosphere, food and drink (which was free) and color.

thoughts on phase 2...

I'm not quite sure what I want to do with my next project. I am thinking that I might like to maybe make a treasure box. something like the pyramids in Mesoamerica, have 2 stelae to go with it.




This isn't exctly "non-western" because meso-America is in the west, but I feel like the cultures of the Aztec and Incas are so far removed from the norms of our culture, it could maybe be considered non-western. I have been learning about mesoamerica in my art history class and I was really interested in the long count calendar. it is a combination of the 365 day and the 260 day calendars. The way that it is written about is on stelae that date back to about 31 BCE. I definately want to try to make some plaster stelae using the shapes the Olmecs (early Aztec) used to create numbers as well as some new designs of my own which would be influenced by the shapes similar to the Aztec/ Olmecs. I could use stones in mosaic ways in the plaster, stones like the ones found in that area like obsidean and turquoise, and jade, and reds (maybe turquoise and jade-like stones-since they are expensive)

I could also make a box and create a sand mandala inside it. one that reflects the ways of the aztecs/ olmecs.using iconography and patterns and cosmology of their civilization.

I have also been thinking about creating a sculpture, wood,a chiseled piece, hmmm. I think i have too many thoughts.

1. I want to work with the olmec long count calendar
2. I want to evolve the shapes I use to express myself in an Olmec/ Aztec way
3. I want to make a sand mandala as well as some kind of construct to house it.

maybe i should just stick with this.

Mandalas:: the Kalachakra Mandala




Kālachakra (Sanskrit: कालचक्र; IAST: Kālacakra; Tibetan: དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ།; Wylie: dus-kyi 'khor-lo) is a bahuvrihi term used in Tantric Buddhism that means "time-wheel" or "time-cycles". It refers both to a Tantric deity (Tib. yidam) of Vajrayana Buddhism and to the philosophies and meditation practices contained within the Kalachakra Tantra and its many commentaries.

I could make one, it would have to be smaller than the ones the monks made. and I could destroy it or burry it. Burying it sounds more like a tradition of the Olmecs. they had most of their sculptures attached to the buildings underneath the ground facing the underworld. also the idea of having the mandala residing within a structure like the pyramid is very Aztec/ Olmec because they beleived that caves were sacred, caves reflect a portal to and from realms of the underworld and where dieties come from. there are 5 dimentions to the Aztec/ Olmecs, NSEW (all represented by the opening of the cave (or pyramid box) and the human figure or the mandala that resides within (5th direction).