Nature

The final competition aired last Wednesday on Bravo.  Now all that is left is the finale.  I am excited to see what is in store; however I worry that the breadth of the finale competition might be greater than what is possible in one week.  We’ll see… you can catch up on the whole season here.

The challenge:

Let me introduce to your muse for this last challenge… nature herself.  Now we want to see how nature inspires you.  You have this afternoon to explore these beautiful surroundings.  The marsh, the sea, and the forest behind you.  And there is one more thing.  We also want you to incorporate some of the raw materials into your piece.  You can use sand, leaves, twigs, anything that is not rooted down, and nothing with a heartbeat.  Find a way to physically bring nature into your art.  You’ll have tonight, and all day tomorrow, to work on your pieces.  Create something amazing because the stakes are high.

Once again I must substitute my surrounds and environs for the challenge.  I went to Wekiva State Park with Connor, to explore for the afternoon.  We spent a couple of hours walking around looking at Sand Lake and picking up some material.

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For this piece, I wanted to convey some of the quiet and solitude of forests.  In Florida there are lots of thin, long pine trees.  The shadows cast during the late hours of the day create a real quiet pattern.  This piece intends to use the branches from the pines to create a piece using shadows.

While I achieved the effect I wanted, I’m afraid that the overall work is not commensurate in scale as the show’s remaining artists.

Order and Chaos (Opposites Attract)

It looks like Bravo’s Work of Art, the Next Great Artist show it coming close to the end.  They are now down to five contestants, and only one more challenge before the finale.

This week, once again, my ability to participate was made more difficult by the structure of the challenge.  This week again allows you to rate their work.  The assignment:

It has been said that opposites attract.  Art has a rich history of exposing the dualities of life.  For your next challenge, we will find out if that is really true.  You will be working in teams to create pieces with opposing themes.

Damnit.  Enough with the team challenges already.  Obviously things will be a little different here.  Once again I won’t have the baggage of working with another contestant; however I will have to combine both opposites in one piece.  The themes were presented by random selection from paint tubes: Heaven and Hell; Order and Chaos; Men and Women.

Order and chaos will be my assignment.

In my piece, I wanted to cover both ends of the spectrum.  What we tend to think of as opposites are really just varying degrees of the same concept.

The selection of a skull for the subject has multiple aspects.  The use of a skull connotes elements of experience beyond choas and /or order — there is an inevitability that looms over things regardless of where on a spectrum you lay.  Also it references uses of skulls in ‘perspective’ illusions, most noticably in The French Ambassadors.

The French Ambassadors by Holbein

The French Abassadors detail, perspective corrected

Compared with the team’s results, I have to say I am happy with mine.  Granted, I did not have to deal with another artist to achieve congruity.  The effect works quite nicely, and it is fun to move and see the piece change.  In this interactive respect, it was similar to Nicoles machine piece, which the guest judge liked.  Additionally, the skull subject provides some contemplative options.  Not sure how ‘literal’ the work is, a condition which seems to be an anathema in this contest.

I admire Mile’s concept for their piece.  Once again he puts an additional twist on the solution by changing the assigned subject from men/women to control.  Adhi has lost it, and is too stuck to his processes, materials, and style.  He wants every solution to contain sculptural elements with a super-hero motif/colors.  In my mind he will be the next to go.

Child’s Play (Thanks, Grandma!)

We brought you here, in the hopes that this setting will start to bring you back.  For your challenge, you will be digging deep.  We want you to create a piece of art that explores the first experiences that shaped you into the artist you are today.  Now to create you masterpieces, you will only have access to the materials here, in the Children’s Museum of the Arts.

When I was about 11 or so, I was given some professional grade materials from both my grandmothers.  Grandma Lupe provided me with a cache of half used oil tubes, and Grandma Anne gave me a set of her used brushes.  Those brushes were provided in a thickly woven, greenish mat, held wrapped in a couple of rubber bands.  These materials provided a window into a rich means of expression, and the receipt of them represented a recognition of my ability and interests.  It was these materials that allowed me to make art on a new level.  I symbolize this with the use of that brush mat as a billowing sail.

It is then perhaps ironic that now I might use childhood materials to express this experience in this piece.

I had plenty of other ideas.  My original intent was to repaint Olympia which was in an art book of my mothers.  That black choker haunts me even today.  I was oblivious to any of the historical references here.  I decided the materials weren’t good enough to even attempt this, not to mention I wasn’t absolutely sure of the composition.

Olympia by Manet

Traveling around the cities in the northeast as a child, I often carried around a little instamatic camera to capture pictures of the modern sculptures, what I called “crazy sculptures.”  Philadelphia had plenty of them.

Sketches/Ideas: