Exhibition Text
Title: Infinity in Color
Medium: Mixed Media
April, 2016
This is a Mixed Media piece I created using the elements from the outside. I used stones and multiple backgrounds of different colors and textures to create this piece. I was inspired by Andy Goldsworthy who is known for using nature to create beautiful art work. I was particularly inspired by his "Pebbles Broken and Scraped" and a few other of his art work. My intention for this piece was to show the idea of infinity in my religion. All of the materials used in this piece were found objects from the outside.
Medium: Mixed Media
April, 2016
This is a Mixed Media piece I created using the elements from the outside. I used stones and multiple backgrounds of different colors and textures to create this piece. I was inspired by Andy Goldsworthy who is known for using nature to create beautiful art work. I was particularly inspired by his "Pebbles Broken and Scraped" and a few other of his art work. My intention for this piece was to show the idea of infinity in my religion. All of the materials used in this piece were found objects from the outside.
Proccess
I didn't really have a hard time with coming up with an idea, the difficult part for me was doing it outside in the windy freezing temperatures we had the last few days. I've been planning for a long time and completely forgot about the weather conditions outside. I think that I should have planned to do the actual piece outside when it was nice because I had difficulties with wind when I did this a few days ago. I had to use winter gloves because if not I could have developed frost bites since I was outside an hour and thirty minutes with wind and temperature being very cold. So I had hard time picking things up with such huge gloves, I couldn't pick up the little rocks. Outside did not want to work with me when I wanted to work, so I had difficult time actually making the piece. Also the brown parts of my piece is old fall leaves that turned brown or black and I found those on the sidewalk. The leaves were very dirty and had a lot of mud and cigarette buds on them and I had to sort them out. The red wood chip, grass, and stones I found them right behind my apartment and so I decided to use them for my piece.
Planning Sketch #1My first planning sketch was the infinity symbol. I decided to sketch this first because it came to mind before any of my other ideas. The circles on the paper that make the infinity symbol represent stones. As they are the materials I decided to use to make my symbols
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Planning Sketch #2Another sketch I made is the star. I was inspired by the designs that Andy Goldworthy used in his artwork. I didn't pick this one because it had no true meaning behind it.
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Planning Sketch #3This planning sketch was my last and least useful. I felt that it wasn't good enough and it looked cheesy after I had finished the planning sketch.
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I found this beautifully colored wood chip behind my apartment and instantly fell in love. I knew for sure I was going to use it in my piece but I didn't know how. So I decided to use it as a background. This was my first time testing the background. I wanted to see if the background would suit my artistic vision. So after debating for a while I decided to try another background because I thought that would expand my horizon.
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When I was using the red wood chip I realized that I could also use the grass around my back yard. I moved and reassembled my stones. I then tried to make the two look identical but it was difficult because it was a windy day and the stones kept moving. When I finished I really liked it but I also liked the red background as well, so I tried to bring both colors in my final piece.
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Artist Inspiration
I've mentioned before who my artist inspiration is for this project. I really loved his work when Cathy introduced him to us in her slides. He captured my eyes with his artwork and I knew on the first day that he would be my artist inspiration. I also wanted to try something new and explore more artistic styles so I chose to get an inspiration from him. I did a lot of research on what kind of materials he likes to use in the outside world and I then from that point on started to plan and sketch. The artworks which inspired me the most is "Pebbles Broken and Scarped" and " Rowan Leaves and Hole" . I really liked how beautiful and natural those two artwork of his looked, and so I decided to put them together to create my own. I combined my ideas with his and came up with my creation. The old fall leaves I used in my piece were inspired by "Rowan Leaves and Hole" and I also used the red wood chip and the grass to give my piece some color. The stones that make the infinity symbol were also inspired by "Pebbles Broken and Scarped" because I thought that it would look nice. Here are the artworks that I took inspiration from
Meaning
My piece relates back to my culture and religion. When I was young I was always told that humans would live forever. My parents told me that humans die but are resurrected in the day of judgment and then humans live in either hell or heaven for eternity. Of course even though I'm Muslim and I strongly believe in many aspects of my religion, I sometimes have my doubts. However, this is one aspect of Islam that I believe so strongly. I just think there is something much greater for humans than just living and then dying. I wanted to show this through this piece and although I had hard time coming up with how, I somehow managed to get an idea through Goldworthy. I used different color stones to represent heaven and hell, the white is obviously heaven and black is hell. I then decided to make them equal in size since humans are suppose to stay in both forever, so the size of the circle represent the time is humans stay. The little flower part in the middle is suppose to represent the world we are in right now. In my culture and religion we have always been thought to see this live as a short and small part of us. so that is why it is very small compared to the other two. When I was planning I decided to show eternity through the infinity symbol because it usually means eternity in my culture and many other cultures. I used stones not only because of Goldworthy but because stones are very significant in my culture. Stones show strength and security from evil, which is why its lining the earth and heaven and hell because they are protected by god.