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Writer's pictureAnnie Jo

CU Boulder - FALL of 2011

SCULPTURE 3:

Childhood Marble Machine

I FINISHED IT !!! It took me about a total of 45-ish hours to complete (a lot of that time I was watching tv while working meaning I was working VERY slowely...probably more like 37 hours with out the tv distractions). This is a recycled piece, like the tree!! Got the high chair at Savers, all the copper wire is electrical wire that I striped about a year ago, the pieces of tape measure came from a broken one I found, the wooden pieces of half tubing my dad gave me from a left over project of his, the clear tubing was collected and the little clear cup came from communion at church. The total time it took to make the piece does NOT include all the time it took to strip the wire.

I'm very happy with this piece!!! During the critique in class I had someone compare it to steam punk stuff which I found interesting.

I'm creating this copper tracked marble machine that wraps around a wooden high-chair. It is taking FOREVER! I've always loved marbles, used to collect them. Had a little over 4,000 of them...yes I would actually count them.

In progress shot. If anyone has any IDEAS that they'd like to SHARE, please let me know!!!!

Tree (really struggling to find a name for this one)

Here is my tree out on the patio at Ideal Market!!

This darn thing took me around 50 hours to create from the welding, the collecting of wooden products, connecting all the wooded pieces and sawing them to size, and creating and attaching probably 100 leaves. I actually sawed through a wooden rolling pin the long way with a hand saw !

The tree is currently at Ideal Market in Boulder CO. It is on display on top of the fridges in the back, should be there for about a month!!!

CERAMICS 2-- Hand-building:

The Guardian Gargoyle

My last ceramics project I made for my father for Christmas. I made a gargoyle for him to put into the new house he is building for my family. He looks pretty hilarious, lazy and scary. I used a cone 4 paper clay. It takes about 2 hours just to make the clay, and don't get me started on how long it takes to make the glazes. The glaze I used was leftover toad belly glaze from the earth lady and I then just mixed in some black stain. The gargoyle kind of looks like it's been thrown into a very large fire. This project is definitely goofy looking, but it was fun to try it out...my mom loves it of course. I decided it was decent enough to give to my dad for Christmas...he seems to actually like it a lot and wants to put it up in our new house that he's working on !

Segmented Face Tiles

Here are my tiles!!! They are made of porcine and the three tiles make up a face, there is a eye, nose and mouth. I used an inlay technique to create the shadow lines on them. First when the tiles are leather hard I pained on a coat of wax, then I scratched the designs into the wax and paint over the whole thing with black slip, after it dries I wiped off all the slip with a damp sponge but the slip stays in all the scratches and the wax burns off in the kiln!! After it's first firing I coated it with a cone 10 clear-ish glaze called Tom Buckle Blue. One more firing and DONE !

Piggy Pie Plate

I used the exact same process on the pie plate as I did the tiles above. It was a birthday gift for my Mom, she loved it!! I drew the pig from a picture of my Mom's pig, Duggy !!!

Lady of the Earth....need to come up with a better name

My ceramic lady! She didn't look anything like this in my head... she is very awkward with her stunted legs, man shoulders, and kankles. Then when I went to glaze her I accidentally mixed up the wrong glaze, I meant to use a glossy clear glaze, but I mixed up a crackle instead. Happy mistake !

She took about 20 hours to complete...felt like more though.

Sculpture 3- FINAL PROJECT:

The Questions

This second marble machine took me about 50 hours, I think about 12 hours for just making my body form out of the bailing wire, and the majority of the leftover time was creating the marble tracks.





WHY:

The reason for this piece is so that I can express the chaos that I feel in my life right now. I don’t know where my education is heading, what I want to do with my life, why I stopped climbing, and why I’m continually broke recently. I want to express that craziness and loneliness that I feel.

The body form itself I’m making out of blackish wire, I didn’t want a shiny silver wire, it wouldn’t be able to portray the more broken down and defeated look. The wire work should look sporadic and unorganized to mirror how I feel my life is right now. I want the wire to have no certain path and look almost blurry in a way, very similarly to some of Antony Gormely’s sculptures. There for the identity of the wire person will be unknown which is definitely a huge thing I’m struggling with as well.

Then there will be the marble machine tracks which will be made of copper and will be greatly contrasting the black messy, human form. I want the tracks to represent several things; my energy, train of thought, and the pathways in which I could choose my life to go. I want the tracks to look as clean cut and shiny as possible. Every once in a while when I think about where my life could go and why I feel so crazy thinking about it, I realize how silly it is and how I’m over dramatizing and making myself feel crazy as things change around me. Another reason I want the tracks to look perfect and controlled is to show that since I feel like I can’t control my life right now and I’m just taking the punches as I go, this marble machine is the only thing I can control and can create in a neat and orderly fashion. It will show the several clear pathways that I have in my life and the marbles will end shooting off in several different directions, which are the directions I could take myself.

The marbles are going to be clear and perfect with a little swirl of color on the inside to represent the little sparks of hope in all of my thoughts. They will all start on the same spot on the machine entering the mouth from the hand and as they travel thought my body they will take different pathways and end in several different locations, this equaling the end scenarios of my choice. They viewers could probably view this piece as a Machine I use to make decisions, if I were to label each of the pathways and then whichever pathway is chosen by more marbles is the one I will choose. Another reason that I chose marbles for this piece instead of steal ball bearings is because these marble are special to me and bring me back to childhood. When I was younger I would collect marbles, I had four thousand some at one point (and yes I did count them). It’s another way to make this piece more personal to me, to use marbles that I’ve had for most of my life.

An important part of the piece is that I’m going to have the wire me sitting in a sort of slouched over, defeated position with my head rested on my hand thinking, still trying to figure things out. Having the wire form on the stool is pedestal like. It portrays how isolated I feel along with the feeling that I have no support in choosing what to do with myself. I have to make the choice, I can be the only one to make the end decision and lead my life where I want it to go.

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