Exhibition Text.Title: The Sacred Garden
Medium: Found & Made Object Size: 17x20cm March 28, 2016 This is a found and made object I created using clay and multiple other found objects. I used some musgo to add some nature to my piece, I also added a bird cage to symbolize it being scared. I was inspired by my surrounding, and what society does to the environment, and so I wanted to show that through this sculpture. My intention for creating this sculpture was the shine some light on how important nature is, and how humans neglect mother nature for their own desires. I was inspired by multiple artist and sculptures for this sculpture. |
Process
This project was the most difficult project I have done this whole school year because of multiple reasons. First it was because of the fact that we had to use clay to do this because I suck at using clay to do anything. I know we learned and practiced a lot last year but I somehow always manage to mess up and make it look really bad. The second reason was because of the glue, I had tried to stick some branches to a clay pottery but it wouldn't work for some reason. At the beginning it had fooled me because it stuck together perfectly fine but as the days went on, I saw that the branches separated from the clay piece. That meant that I had to restart my whole project and I did because I had no choice. Also another thing that bothered me when I was doing this project was the ideas that I was coming up with. At first I had this idea that I should do a bust made out of clay and put some flowers/ moss on it to make it centered around nature. Sadly the bust was too ugly when I finished and I couldn't even distinguish the facial features of the bust. So I again had to restart so that I could actually finish this project. I still wanted the nature theme and I wanted to show that nature is sacred to me but I didn't know how. Upon thinking for a few days, I finally came up with an idea that satisfied the projects requirement and what I wanted for the sculpture. I decided upon doing a cage bird with a clay piece on the bottom to demonstrate the importance of nature to me.
This is my first sketch of what I wanted the bird cage to look like. I was still trying to figure out how I was going to incorporate clay into something like that so I knew I was going to eventually add some kind of a clay.
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This was the clay piece that I decided to make. I just wanted something that would support the cage and the bird and I thought this small pottery was perfect because it is both sacred and practical. I made it purple because I thought it would look nice but now looking at it, the purple is not my cup of tea.
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My original idea with the branches looked just like this but a little bit more different. I found this picture after making my piece and I was wondering what glue the person used.
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This is how the branches looked that I used for my original idea that turned into a disaster. I just went outside and got these from a small tree near by my apartment. I cut them into small pieces so they would fit.
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This is the grassy looking material that I used for my sculpture. I wanted to use this moss in all of my ideas for this project so it was a huge part of this sculpture in general.
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Artist Inspiration
My artist inspiration is actually not involved with sculpting but rather he liked to paint nature. I know it sounds crazy but I couldn't find any artist that sculpts that I had gotten any kind of inspiration from because none of them were focusing on nature. When I was going through my old DBQ from sophomore year, I came across Claude Monet. One of his paintings add a lot of green and a bridge which looked like a cage to me in it and that's when I got the idea. I saw a lot of his painting revolved around nature, and I started to think that I should do something with nature. I didn't know what to do with nature, but when I saw his painting " Japanese Bridge" I instantly knew what I was going to do. I got the moss because of how green the background of the painting was. I also wanted to show nature being trapped in our society, so the bridge gave me an idea. Anyways I put a lot of things together in order to come up with this sculpture but most of the ideas that I have done for the sculpture were from his paintings.
Meaning
There is a lot of important meaning behind this piece. First off, I wanted to show how important nature is and how people should see it as something that is sacred. Most people don't really care for mother nature and they litter, burn fossil fuels, and pollute the earth like it's not gonna get damaged. This really bothers me a lot because I want earth to be beautiful, and not only that but save for us to live in. Unfortunately though, not many people feel the same way as I do, most actually don't really care at all. The symbolism behind the cage is to show that we should hold onto a greener earth. That people should start to take care of the earth and hold on tight to to it so that we don't lose it. The pottery on the bottom of the sculpture is to represent maintenance. Now that we're holding onto mother nature, we should maintain it that way so that we don't loose it again. I think it's really important to maintain something rather than acquire it once and lose it again. The bird represents how freed the poor animals that we damage their homes would feel. They would be safer and less animals would have to go extinct.