Mid-second semester, I became interested in the idea of creating spaces, especially spaces that are completely unusual in their context. Like converting a work studio space into a cave that’s still completely functional as a work studio, so trees and rocks would open to reveal cabinets and drawers, etc. That would be a far more complicated version of what ended up being my final for Visual Language 2. Continue reading
Given some examples, making an artist book is really not that easy of a thing to tackle, especially when the assignment is this open. But I managed. I wanted my last two projects for this class to have to do with home, be it a place or simply the concept of home. Looking back now, I realize I did a few others leading up to this and at the same time, in other classes, that were about home as well. I guess it was a pretty solid theme in my subconscious at the time.
Anyway, the assignment was very open, and I didn’t quite do as much with it as I wanted to, but with all the other finals going on at the same time, it was a pretty daunting task to focus on this enough as well. And I am happy with the way it came out, and it’s gotten great response.
The book cover is a dark, earthy, grainy walnut, roughly cut, with the words ‘home…’ on the outside and ‘An embrace from a place’ on the inside. When you open the book, there are two hands, and if you pull out the hands, their arms stretch out and unwrap themselves to reveal memories and thoughts of home written all over them. The hands have Velcro in their palms, so that when the memories are all read through, they can clasp behind you, and you are literally embraced by home.
This was a very open assignment, as were most of the later-semester projects in my studio classes, that simply asked us to trace lots of stuff – anything we wanted – and assemble those tracings into a drawing. We did this over spring break, so we had 3 weeks to do it and finish our Mapping Routine project, so naturally mine became much more complicated than that… Continue reading