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.

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.

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.

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:

I probably deliberated as much on how to address these inconsistencies as the actual solution to the challenge.

In New York, at the site of an installation ‘garden’ of rocks and chain link fence, was the challenge.  Make a meaningful work of public art.  This time, artists were separated into two groups of 4, and have twice the normal time to complete.

Needless to say, no chance of making a meaningful, well constructed public art piece in two days.

I selected my backyard as my location, quite a bit different than what was given to the show artists.  For team members, I will only have myself (and some additional help from Yasmin, Logan, Connor, and Lisa.  Connor even made his own maquettes in the video!)  My piece echos the organic nature of the greenery in the backyard, arching shapes that convey a sense of plant stems, perhaps tuber related growths jumping out of the rest of the plants.

Click to view slideshow.

I’m a bit disappointed with the result.  The size and complexity of a 3D public art piece, and reality of a day job and after hours opportunity is a tough mix.  Extra time for the contestants was nice, but I couldn’t really double my time; also no additional team members here.  Granted that might make it easier to operate.  Add to that 95°+ temperature days in the garage and all and all it wasn’t a fun project.

Scaling up the piece from the maquette was close, but it lost something in the scaling.  Quality of construction was somewhat hampered by the available materials, and I wasn’t keen on spending too much on this installation piece that could not be realistically used anywhere else or stored.  Given the freedom the contestants had — I would have gone with metal.

Time Lapse Video:

Side note on Erik’s departing comment.  Just because he didn’t get any of his ‘ideas’ into the work doesn’t mean it wasn’t his piece.  You just can’t ‘opt’ out of a team effort like that.  In the end his failure to participate in his own work was his own doing, and he paid for it.

The challenge for this week:

The saying goes, art imitates life.  And for this challenge, we gave you all a journey through New York to the Audi Forum.  We want to you use that experience as inspiration for a work of art.  It can be anything you saw or did, its that simple.

Well I didn’t have the luxury of a trip through New York for my inspiration… what I had instead was my way to work in the morning.  If there was any consolation, at least I had an Audi to go in.

My inspiration comes from the effect of Urban Sprawl: we now live in a homogeneous America, where unique characteristics of geographical locations are practically nonexistent.   To buffer this idea, I drew on childhood memories of handheld, manual ‘car race’ games.  These games would have a car on the top window, and inside a strip of paper with a race course could be turned to give the impression of a moving car.  Combined with a bleak colored Hopper-esque paintings of franchised, you get my entry to the challenge.

Hopper's Sunday Morning

Ideas:

Scaling for the final piece

Time Lapse:

Oil

This is so tough to wait a week to see what the show’s results are like, but I’ve managed to wait until finishing my piece again.  I wonder what it would be like to get course corrections based on the other artists’ directions.  It’s so common for me to have eureka moments when watching what their solutions are using.

The assignment?

For your challenge, we want you to create your own shocking piece of art.

Solution:

The image of a baby coated in oil is intended to suggest memorable images of oil-coated wildlife caused by oil spills.  The use of a baby form serves two purposes — it makes these tragedies more personal to the viewer, and acts as a symbol of our future as a whole.

Is it alive or dead?  Is it too late to make better choices about our impact on the environment?

Compare against the show’s artwork:

Work of Art – Photos – Episode 4: Rate the Work | Bravo TV Official Site.

For a quick synopsis of the show, with some dead on observations, check this out.

Thought Process:

For the past 60+ days we have been constantly hearing about the oil spill in the Gulf and what it might mean for the environment and for people on the Gulf Coast.  Despite all the imagery of spewing deep water pipes, oil slicks and matted pelicans, we haven’t done much — who among us has even tried to change their driving practices as a result of this?  What would it take for us to change our habits?  I decided to take the oil slicked bird imagery to a hyperbole.

How is babby formed?

I was able to avoid spending any additional money on materials, I was able to use the clay and sand bought for the Shape of Things to Come episode.  The baby would be made small scale in clay, and the sand with a background would be the ‘beach’ backdrop.  I had to go with a diorama like scale because the short timescale and locality of these assignments prevents me from going to the beach or buying a plastic baby doll.

Overall I found the original plan of side-on photos of the figurine with the sea background didn’t look ‘baby’ enough.  I was happy about the Golden tar gel with black acrylic making a passable tar-oil look:

False Starts:

Some ideas that didn’t make the grade:

• Large, inflated penises with a model hugging a black one.

This was kind of a knee jerk reaction to having to make something shocking, and didn’t hold up well against other ideas.  It’s clear that the judges have an appreciation for work that is personal and bears some relationship to the artist.

• Traditional Still Life with candies and an amputated toe as a statement about Obesity and Diabetes.

This would be a good vehicle for displaying technical capabilities, however doesn’t relate too much to me.  Plus I’m not sure how strong the causal relationship between sweets and Diabetes is.

Side note:  Simon de Pury finally gave some indication of overall time for assignments when he came for the mid-critique — they had met Andres Serrano that morning.  Sounds like they then have over 12 hours per assignment, getting at least from 11:59am until midnight to complete.  And in a reference on a youtube clip, China Chow basically said that they do it all in 18 hours.  So there it is — guess I should have done a little research to clarify!

Let me just say — I was not happy with my solution this week.  But as I discovered after finishing the show, a lot of the artists were in the same boat.

This weeks show centered around making the cover art for one of six books:

1. Monster – Frankenstein
2. Love – Pride and Prejudice
3. Immortal – Dracula
4. Good vs. Evil – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
5. Time Travel – Time Machine
6. Adventure – Alice in Wonderland

You have to just think of something that will distinguish itself from everything else in the marketplace.  You have until midnight tonight and only one hour tomorrow to work on your covers.

Whoa.  From the reaction in the group, this could probably be the shortest assignment of all so far.  Clearly they get a chance to shop at the art store, and $99.95 of Abdi’s checkout implies a $100 limit again for supplies.  Miles’ decision to read the book, estimated at 4 hours, clearly means the time is maybe closer to 8 hours total, not including the hour the following day?  As seen in the video, my total hours topped out at 8 to get the artwork done — but it was a tough 8 hours.

This week I decided to not watch the whole show.  I stopped 8 minutes in.  Any solutions I see might tinge my approach, especially when there are two solutions of each book already… I watched the rest of the show after finishing my own work.  As it turns out, I missed any mention of the titling on the artwork itself.  Therefore I used the additional hour left to title the piece digitally.

I determined my choice randomly, with a six sided die against the list above, and then proceeded to the art store for purchase of supplies.

work in motion

So, why collage?  I was struck by the recommendation that the work standout from others.  I felt that an effective collage would really stand apart.  Unfortunately, it also has a lot  of (too much?) detail.  And that claptrap above their heads?  I was trying to convey a feeling of London with that truly European style of stone-setting on roads.

Clearly, my solution fails to embrace the main cover art elements stressed at the gallery show:

simplicity/boldness I realized this halfway into the work.  I had enlarged the head of Mr. Hyde but the detail required using collage was too much.  So much detail worked into the collage pieces making the overall piece is lost when placed on a book cover.

integation of text and art I couldn’t do too much about this.  My decision to not watch the full show, and the ambiguity in the assignment as stated at the show’s beginning, may this unavoidable.

art relates to the literature To some extent, this was approached, and probably better than a number of other solutions.  But I can’t say that the element of ‘good’ is strongly represented in the work.  But people that know the book know that there was preference for maintaining reputation over doing the ‘right’ or ‘fair’ thing; the literature itself did not present a strong good vs. evil juxtaposition.

Now for your take — how did I do?

View This Poll

My take on the other art:

This weeks challenge is a tall order.  I had to carefully reconsider my rules, since the rules I laid out at the beginning don’t cover a lot of issues that came up this week.  The challenge?  To take junk appliances and make sculpture.

“Your challenge is to use at least one of those appliances in your next piece of art.  How you do this is entirely up to you.  But — it has to be three dimensions.  It has to be sculpture.”

Not having access to a junk-garage full of tv’s with free stuff, I had to make do with the Salvation Army’s center for items.  I limited myself to 30 minutes, like the show — but I couldn’t throw everything and the kitchen sink into this endeavor… there just wasn’t that much stuff to be had.

Nonetheless, I came away with a vacuum, some CD players, assorted small electronic gizmos, book, VHS cassette, etc.  total cost was around $20.

Not getting the full details from the show, I had to assume some things:

1. The contestants have “a lot more time” for this project — I am going to assume 24 hours total
2. the studio comes supplied with all typical art materials and tools
3. Additional effort, to frame or mount pieces, are not part of the time (its clear that framing is done after the deadline and before the show.)

To help track my time, I installed a webcam, set to take one frame each 11 seconds — making 24 hours into a five minute video.

The solution is made of cast plaster of paris, expandable foam, chipboard, and plastic electronics.  I’m trying to convey the overhead placed upon us by the ever expanding informational and technological world we choose to participate in.  I wanted a somberness and silence in the piece.

As described, the assignment:

Each of you will create a portrait of your competitors.  A successful portrait is one that shows the viewer the inner essence of the subject, and not just their likeness.

Total time: now “til midnight, a few hours tomorrow.”  I’ll assume this means about 6 hours or so.

I used about an hour to look through the pictures I took of my sons, process them somewhat in Photoshop and get them printed.  Small, 10″x10″ wood plates I had available would be just small enough to hope to get done.  I did Logan the first night, Connor the next.  I opted for a small, quirky content in a painterly style,reminiscent of Jeff’s Expressions:

Overall time — not quite sure, but close to the 6 hour mark including preprocessing.  But the work was distributed over several days.  It’s a bit of a conceit, since despite efforts to not consciously prepare, there is no doubt I get an advantage with the downtime between the actual work…

How do I think I did?  I’ve grouped the other artwork into three groups and included my own where I think it seems comparable.

Group 1, the outstanding.  I think Abdi’s orange-ish rendition of Ryan was the winner.

Group 2, the So-So (I think mine is in this group):

And finally Group 3, the Meh.  Style, execution, success of the portrait all contribute to where these place:

I haven’t been up to much artwork lately.  In fact currently, I would like to be at Elizabeth Ross’ Farm Class right now — but I couldn’t hope to go due to work.

And last week I happened across Bravo’s recent TV show, Work of Art.  Wouldn’t that be cool to be a part of… well maybe I can, sort of.  I could participate in each week’s art assignment.  So I resolved to the following:

• Each week, record/watch the show.
• By the following week, accomplish that weeks assignment, as closely as possible, within the same total time constraints.
• Publish my solution alongside comments on the other work.

So.

I am already behind.  Tomorrow I will complete and post the first assignment, a portrait of someone else.