Exhibition Text
Title: Glass Chair
Medium: Found Object Size: 10x6cm February 15, 2016 This is a chair I made out of glass beads, and then I incorporated some flowers. This chair represent my hope and bright thinking for the future ahead of me, I wanted to show that I’m excited for whatever the future brings. I was inspired by a well known Japanese artist that show cases his artwork on social media, and I took interest in some his art work. I really liked that he used glass beads to make animals and he sometimes combines them with a found object to create some beautiful artwork. |
Process
At the beginning of this project I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to do. I searched online about found object artist and I found a Japanese artist that I liked. I looked at his artwork and I noticed a repeating theme which was the glass beads he used and how he likes to include nature into his sculptors. This gave me an idea to make an industrial object out off an industrial materiel and add some organic pieces to make it look pleasing to the eye. To do this, I went out and bought a couple of things such glass beads, fake flowers, and some hot glue sticks to use. I started it off by gluing two glass beads together and then I worked my way around it by slowly gluing the rest together. It took me about two hours if not longer for me to finish my first model, which ended up breaking into pieces later that month. I was devastated because I needed the sculpture to display in the gallery show for gallery night, and so I had a few days to remake it again. I thought it would be easy and would take me a few hours but for some reason the beads wouldn't stick together and they kept following apart. I did a simple design so that the beads stay stuck together because I found out that the bigger I made the chair the more it broke apart. The small simple design didn't fall apart.
This was the first chair that I made, it was to my expectation. Sadly it broke apart and I had to remake one a few days before gallery night. This made me very angry because I initially wanted the chair to look like this but since it was destroyed and I had a few days to make it, I made a new one that wasn't as good as this one.
|
This is an up close picture of how I stuck the glass beads together with hot glue gun. This was very difficult to do because hot glue doesn't work well with glass and so it wouldn't stick together whatever I did. I found a solution however, and it was to let the glue sit in a cold temperature window for a while before picking it up and moving it around.
|
My first planning sketch was simple and to the point and so I didn't need to do more than one planning sketch. I liked the simplicity of the idea and that I could execute it properly without thinking about it too much. At first I thought I could do this easily but when I actually attempted to do it, I found out that it wasn't easy.
|
Important Materials
The flower and the hot glue gun were two important materials/ tools I used to complete this project. Without the hot glue gun I would not be able to make the chair stick together better because other glues such as super glue and gorilla glue were not working for the glass beads that I was using for the chair.
|
Artist Inspiration
I found my artist inspiration online while I was researching on artist that do found objects sculptures. This particular artist peaked my interest because of how unique the materials he used were. I've never seen anyone use glass beads to make sculptures and it was definitely my first time seeing such a unique form of art. Since I enjoyed it so much, I took some inspiration from the artist and came up with the chair above. The artist name is Kohei Nawa, he was born in 1975, and is currently based in Japan. Most of his artwork consists of animals made out of glass beads with some form of found object with it. Even after founding him while I was researching, I also found a few pieces of his artwork on my Instagram and that's when I decided that I'll use glass beads like he does to make the object I wanted.
Meaning
Originally I was going to make a taller chair but because the glue wouldn't work as well as I hoped, I had to make the chair shorter. The length of the chair was important for its symbolism because the length represented something. Now that the length of the chair has been changed the meaning of the sculpture also changed. I wanted the chair to represent some obstacle that might get in the way while I'm trying to achieve my goal in the future. The length of the chair is suppose to represent the long way I have to go before I can reach my goal. Ever since I was little I always debated about being an artist or a doctor, I have a strong passion for both. Art because when I use to live in the refugee camps, I had no TV or toys to play with, so I would always draw and make some kind of a sculpture. It kept me entertained and it still keeps me entertained today. However, I also had a good experience with doctors without border when they came to my camps aid after a malaria outbreak in 2006. Those doctors voluntarily saved a lot of people's life in that camp, and gave new hope to many families including my own and that has inspired me to want to become a doctor. Therefor I'm having this debate on my head on between being an artist and being a doctor and this chair represent my hopes for the future. The flowers represent that whether I become an artist or a doctor, I'm looking forward to my future and I'm hoping that it will be beautiful whatever I decide to become. I used the glass beads to show all the bums I'm going to have to get through to get to the flowers and even when I get there, there will be more obstacles to face in my daily life.