Mixed Media
Exhibition TextA childhood of sports. This is the essence of this Mixed Media piece. Each found object in this artwork was a part of my experience playing baseball from just learning at a very young age to playing competitively. The focus of this piece was to show the amount of equipment that can be accumulated while playing sports and that each piece has helped me to be where I am today.
Planning For this mixed media project, I will emulate Stuart Haygarth's Sharps Project. I had found all of my family's old shoes in storage and decided to use them as there were many. I used a few in order to lay them out and get a sense of balance and position. I then found some sports equipment and laid it out as well. Both of these have a connection to me in some sort of way. The shoes are a connection to my family and all the different shoes we've used and lived in while the sports equipment shows a part of me and who I am. With playing sports my whole life, I have replaced equipment many times which means I have a plethora of items to use.
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Found Objects #1
81.3 cm x 61 cm Found Object with Digital Manipulation March 2017 |
Inspiration
http://www.stuarthaygarth.com/
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Inspiration for this piece of Found Objects came from Stuart Haygarth’s Sharps Project. Stuart Haygarth created many different works with found objects including vases, glasses, and TSA (Transportation Security Administration) confiscations as seen in Sharps Project. Haygarth obtained confiscated items from over a two week period from an airport. This included scissors, wrenches, screwdrivers, pocket knives, bottle openers, cork screws, combs, tweezers, kitchen utensils, toy weapons, and other miscellaneous objects. Each of the objects was placed into one of seven categories; Scissors, Vanity, Tools, Drinking and Smoking, Culinary, Toy Weapons, Misc. This immense collection of confiscations shows the ridiculous amount of relatively everyday items taken by the TSA in an attempt to keep us safe from terrorism.
Some important aspects of Stuart Haygarth's Sharps Project include his precision, balance, and his categorization. In this piece, he placed every single object into a category giving an overall sense of unity that brings each section together as a whole. His precision is outstanding which adds the effect of perfection that the balance brings. Each object is meticulously placed in line with the last in a long repetition. I will be incorporating Haygarth's process of precisely lining the objects and categorizing them. I will have six categories for this project: Gloves, Bats, Cups, Helmets, Cleats, and Gear. I will also be using GIMP in order to create a perfect white background and manipulate the objects by rotating and moving them to create the overall feeling of perfection/precision. |
Process
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I started this project by collecting materials having to do with sports. All of them ended up being equipment that I had previously used in my life. I then focused the project more on baseball by eliminating the equipment that wasn't baseball related. Once I had collected the necessary materials, I laid them out over a white bed sheet. This gave me a mediocre and kind of sloppy background to set up the found objects. The craftsmanship was quite poor with the ever-wrinkling sheet under the equipment which meant it was necessary for me to find some other way to set up the materials and manipulate them to be perfectly spaced and in line as I intended.
In order to do this I used GIMP (a photo editing software similar to Photoshop) in order to manipulate the materials and also have a clean pure background much like my inspiration. I started by taking a photograph of every object I had obtained separately in order to achieve higher quality images and also easily edit each object separately. I then used Gimp to separate the object from it's original background and placed it onto a large white background. I did this separately for each object and then manipulated them to fit. I started the manipulation by moving the objects into their respected groups and resizing them in order to fit every object. I then rotated all of the objects and respaced them in order to keep balance and a precise sense of pattern. |
ReflectionProcess: At first this project seemed simple to me until I really took the time to notice the precision that Stuart Haygarth had when creating his work. In seeing this, I tried to replicate the precision on my own which was a real challenge with the materials that I had. This problem was resolved by taking a suggestion to edit the photos in order to achieve the level of precision in the placement of the object and cleanliness of the background.
Meaning: As for the meaning, I think it was fairly clear and communicated through the work. I attempted too show that the objects were obtained from years of playing baseball by keeping some of the sizes of the equipment varying as seen in the cleats and the cups. Another purpose of this artwork that I believe was less communicated was that playing sports is a privilege. Sports equipment is relatively expensive and it starts to add up quickly, especially baseball equipment. I tried to show this by including a large amount of objects, but it was not as easily communicated as I had hoped. CritiqueIn regards to my inspiration, Stuart Haygarth's Sharps Project, my piece turned out to be successful. The precision and placement of the found objects turned out to be great after using Photoshop. This change, rather than using a blanket, made this project turn out better, but also made the process much more precise and exact to manipulate and form the artwork.
Group Critique Response My mixed media piece needs many improvements. For starters, It needs a stronger meaning behind it other than it just having the significance of being a decade’s worth of used shoes worn by my family. I plan to better explain the meaning when I can find the right word to do so. As for the piece itself, I need to expand it with more shoes and on a larger space. I have many more shoes that I can use, but I need to find a space large enough to lay out the display. The best place will most likely be in my driveway as there is plenty of space, but another issue will be lighting. I will most likely need to rely on the natural light which means I have to find a nice day and know exactly how to lay out the project beforehand. I also need to decide whether I should continue with all the different types of shoes continue with the sports theme equipment. This bring me to my inspiration connection. Both my piece styles emulate my inspiration, Haygarth, very well. The repetition and patterns of objects make the connection obvious, but both of my ideas connect well in different ways. Haygarth’s piece was created with different objects with one theme which is what would work for the sports equipment, but I like the visual aspect of just the rows of different shoe types and styles which emulates the work well, but only includes one type of object in reality. Either way, I can’t go wrong, but I plan to go ahead with just the different types of shoes as I don’t have a vast amount of the all the different types of sports equipment. This might give the effect that I just through some of the object into the collection for no apparent reason Words: 308 |
ACT Connection1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your work.
Stuart Haygarth used a large amount of precision in his work to create pattern and unity which caused my to used digital manipulation in an attempt to replicate his level of perfection. 2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration? Stuart Haygarth's work was an attempt to show a kind of absurdness that the TSA has become though showing the ridiculous number of confiscations. 3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, ect. while you researched your inspiration? The level of security that now must take place seems ridiculous or overkill, but it is necessary because of the inability t trust anybody. 4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? I really focused on categorizing object for a reason, not just in functionality or purpose of an object, but grouping certain object due to a deeper meaning that should be understood. 5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? We all view things differently whether it be objects or people. For example, a comb may not appear to be dangerous but to the TSA it is worthy of confiscation. |