Checkerboard Landscape

For me the moving checkerboard is a way to create time and space. Adding the mirrors create an anxiety filled landscape of potential movement of space and and a stopped moment in forever moving time. Ever since I made this piece, I've wanted to continue making a series of these landscapes. All semester long I've planned on making something for the final project involving this moving checkerboard landscape and mirrors, however, I've really like elements to some of my other sculptures this semester (especially the drawing on a transparency). I would love to combine these ideas into either one large coherent piece or several smaller pieces.... I open to suggestions!

The Piece That Started My Mirror Obsession

This is the piece that began my obsession with mirrors. Every time I looked into the box I found a new pathway of vastness through the maze of broken mirrors. I know lots of bad luck....

Mary MIss Response

Artist #5 Mary Miss

My Response

I responded to the environments she creates in her work. She also mentions in an interview that she uses water as reflection. I responded by creating my own environment using mirrors, water, wire, and a few other things. I could really see this work installed either in a hole in the ground or in an all white environment.

James Turrell Response

Artist #4 James Turrell

My Response

Turrell uses light as a medium. I attempted to do the same.... attempted being the key word. I noticed I can't get away from black and white in any of my work... except painting....I think this was the weekend I was writing that painting 2 paper...

Rachel Whiteread Response

Artist #3 Rachel Whiteread

My Response

Whiteread creates molds of large interior spaces, usually of buildings. She points out spaces we don't normally notice. Instead of responding by molding a negative space of an interior, I molded the outside space of a small souvenir of Big Ben on all four sides. It's sort of negative space but flip flopped inside out.

Liza Lou Response

Artist # 2 Liza Lou

My Response

Liza Lou's work is about the dangers of consumerism. Even though I kept that in mind when I responded to her work, I responded more visually than conceptually. The checkerboard pattern becomes a veil in my response sculpture piece. To me its a way to create time and space and references the victorian era. Also, the space that this sculpture creates is collapsed space.

**this is the point in the semester that I started thinking about the idea of a veil and how it relates to mirrors, and the white cloth I was using to cover up some of my construction problems with the outside of my mirror pieces. I've thought of this idea in relation to my 2-D work as well ** go look at Bill Viola's videos of people going through water!

Beverly Pepper Response

Artist #1 Beverly Pepper

My Response

I was inspired by the idea of erosion in Pepper's work. I used charcoal (a medium I respond to in drawing) to express this idea. It reminded me of the black sand beach in Santorini created from a volcanic eruption thousands of years ago. Also, Beverly Pepper creates her sculptures by cutting styrofoam and they are not predetermined. Her process of arriving at simple shapes was the same approach I took to building this tiny sculpture. I really enjoyed using drawing materials I love in a sculpture. It's a tiny and intimate. Any suggestions for using charcoal in the future?

Spell of the Sensuous. Ch 6.

My sculpture reaction for chapter 6 was an attempt to portray the freezing of time. I responded to the quote from chapter 6 "the singular magic of a place is evident from what happens there, from what befalls oneself or others when in its vicinity. To tell of such events is implicitly to tell of the particular power of that site, and indeed to participate in its expressive potency." Abram also talks about cyclical time. Although this may be true in nature for humans time is very linear and we can only find consolation through an attempt to hold onto memories through experiences of places. This sculpture was a big step for me because I found a way to incorporate drawing in my work. Oh it's also very theatrical.

SPell of the Sensuous. Ch 5.

I responded to the quote from chapter 5 " We can no more stabilize the language and render its meanings determinate than we can freeze all motion and metamorphosis within the land." (I spent that whole weekend writing a paper for painting II... that's all I got... I also just wanted to use that white stuff). It's a mirror landscape! I actually think it relates to previous sculptures and drawings I have done of a "moving checkerboard" landscape.

Spell of the Sensuous. Ch 4.

The quote "The letters, and the written words that they present, are not subject to the flux of growth and decay, to the perturbations and cyclical changes common to other visible things they seem to hover, as it were, in another strangely timeless dimension " from chapter 4 was what I responded to most from the chapter. For me, the mirrors create a timeless environment for the word to sit in. Also Abram talks about the process of looking at a word while contemplating its meaning. The word reflection in the mirrors forces the viewer to process the meaning of the word, while looking at the word at the same time.

Spell of the Sensuous. Ch 3.

I responded to the idea of how a higher knowledge of language is a result of interconnected layers of language. Our higher sense of language is only one piece to the overall connections. The wire in this piece represents these connections and the mirrors reflect the vastness of these connections. It's also a reaction to language and the gestures within language that Abram discusses in the book.

There are mirrors on all sides....the top one is unstable... it needs to be fixed!

Spell of the Sensuous. Ch 2.

My response to the second chapter was the significance of the individuals experience of the world. No two people can have the same encounters in the world. No matter how much science can attempt to explain to me how a mirror works it can't explain the effect of seeing another world within each mirror and not being about to experience that world.

Abram writes in chapter 2 "...a collective field of experience lived through from many different angles. The mutual inscription of others in my experience, and (as I must assume) of myself in their experiences, effects the interweaving of our individual phenomenal fields into a single, ever-shiftiing fabric, a single phenomenal world or 'reality.'"

Spell of the Sensuous. Ch 1.

In chapter one Abram writes about a moment when he notices the stars reflected in pools of water in between rice paddies. He describes an environment in which there is vastness in nature. My response was an attempt to re-create another environment in nature in which there is a sense of vastness. I was very inspired by the point in which the sky and ground meet at the horizon. Using mirrors I created a mini-ice cave environment. There is something very peaceful quiet about vastness in nature; fresh snow on a cold winters night, reflection in pools of water and sky, even the connection of ocean and sky and forests that seem as if they go on forever.

I Hate Technology

This needs to work so I can post stuff for sculpture 2