RIVER PROJECT PART 1, slightly illegal i bet

part 1: capturing degradation from the river currents









smaller slab. different area.






AND this whole escapade was captured on video by a guy from the nbc to the 10 providence weather team. was featured on tonight's news - go art!

part 2: retrieval in a few days and then mold-making for glass casting.

Gabriel Orozco @ MOMA

This was one of my favorite pieces from the Gabriel Orozco exhibition at the MOMA (January 30). There is such a strong relationship between his body, his hands and the piece itself.
The first glass piece that I casted in my WS Glass Casting was of clay tiles that held the imprints from our hands in knuckles, finger points/jabbing/gripping/sliding...) Although not as suggestive in form as the Orozco's heart, the piece does nonetheless draw a direct relationship between what was manipulated in the clay by my hands to what was casted in glass.
This piece is an object, much like those mentioned in the documentary "Objectified." But there is something about the process to this final product that revealed my hand - my hands creasing the clay, which in turns creases the glass...


end of wintersession and cleaning out my space in the glass lab, i came across this piece that i had made out of plaster. funny, i believe this piece was made prior to looking at Gabriel Orozco's "My heart is my hand" work. part of a series of plaster work, in manipulating the properties of this material - understanding how it can capture details (handprints, edges, patterns) as it cures. So i had clasped a glob of plaster between my hands and held it in place for a few minutes as i felt the plaster heat up and cure. now the piece dictates a certain movement/way of my hands, it replicates/represents/refers to the presence of my hands. left image is of my right handprint and the right image is of my left handprint.

Drawings

Thinking about the sun and great expanse of the land where the landscape merges with the seascape, merges with the skyscape. How reflections occur on all these planes. The arctic sun in the summer, does not rise from the east and sets in the west, rather it rises at a single point in the horizon and to quote Barry Lopez in Arctic Dreams, "turns over like a whale." Ball point pen.


I poured a capful of turpentine onto the paper and then started to draw lines at increments, vertically to define the edges of the stain. Turpentine will temporarily make the drawing sheet transparent before it dries (it will not leavea residue). This drawing came from the idea of capturing something before it disappeared, as a placeholder to define space (i had also been looking at Gabriel Orozco's Toothpaste spit drawing) I then continued to draw lines, at smaller increments as the stain dried up, so that the lines eventually passed through the stain itself. I then poured turpentine on the same sheet but drew the lines horizontally. I should have stopped at one stain because the drawing has become rather incomprehensible.


Aufeis is german for "Ice on Top" and is a sheet-like mass of layered ice that forms from successive flows of ground water during freezing temperature (wikipedia). The right of the drawing shows a mass of ice breaking apart from the main mass (the lines are spaced closer together). No erasing.

Etchings - lineworks

Went to visit the John Hays Library at Brown University. Perusing through old books and maps on the Arctic. Saw these lovely etchings of arctic landscapes - the aggregation, the thickness of the lines reveal movement, density and qualities of light and space. I am reminded of the 2d representation inherent in architecture, the multitude of drawings to bring to life the spatial experience (of the proposal).
From The Arctic World - its plants, animals and natural phenomenom, (London, 1876).

Daily Wax Studies: Jan 18-24, 2010

shrinking to 1/4 lb. wax.

Jan 24: Wax as a surface for texture. rolled a glass bottle over a slightly cooled wax to create an almost flaky texture to the glass.

Jan 23: thinking about wax generally captures a moment and how to push that toward capturing an action. so what of fabric, a stretching of the fabric with wax poured on top of it. not entirely satisfied with this particular one. more work. the cotton towel stretched only so far and i dipped it into the wax pot at first, but i couldn't build up the layers that way so i poured it on the folded fabric strip.

Jan 22: hand manipulating the wax. pouring out a sheet, then rolling it up and twisting it with my hands. wax was too warm so it was rather sticky and didn't create the clean lines of a twisted plane.

Jan 21: another clay study. reminds me of an egg. the middle portion is a heat pocket, and outer edges cool down faster.

Jan 20: i have been thinking about the whole process of moldmaking - the placeholding of another material for that of glass. glass being the critical material for its optical qualities, transformative processes, etc. in casting, we spend about 90% of the time making the mold/working with the mold in the kiln and only 10% of the time actually spent working directly on the final piece.
that got me thinking about clay, how clay disintegrates in water. what if clay were to hold the place of something for wax to be poured in. forming a clay cup with holes at the sides, pouring wax in increments so that it can build up in the clay.

Jan 19: i have been pouring plaster over crumpled brown paper and the most interesting forms/spaces have been captured underneath. the paper is able to hold the angles in the form of crevices/valleys and mountain ranges (results from the weight of the plaster combined with the solidification of the plaster). i decided to cast this in glass - so... next week is when the glass comes out of the kiln!

i transferred this experiment into wax - wax is lighter and hotter than plaster. i wonder what it would be like to poured 200 degree wax on something that would ignite...that's another day. very similar qualities between wax and plaster. but unlike plaster where i could wait only a few second before pouring another layer to build up the thickness, wax requires more time and patience. as seen in previous studies, wax tends to flow outwards onto the rubber mat - creating those flat tidal pools around the object (what was i was pouring upon).

Jan 18: edible munchies, pouring wax over a pile of popcorn. organic matters can be added into the mold in glass casting - the material will just burn away so what if, the pores, the secret corners, the hidden planes of organic matter such as a pineapple, an artichoke can be captured in glass. or in this case, wax.

making

frustrations in making.
spending days in the plaster lab trying to make a plaster-silica mold and still not even close to being done. it is tempting to say that the previous work were mistakes and get frustrated with having to spend more time to figure out the mold (roundabout way, the farthest points from a to b). but i'm realizing that had i not gone through the process of those previous attempts than what i have now in front of me would not be what it is. more of a refinement of what i had originally visualized for this glass piece.
more about actual mold making later and my wax studies. mold-making is such a MESSY process!
i'm beginning to see how in this process of moldmaking, it is very much the idea of a placeholder be it plaster, or wax or an actual object/surface, then is/is not removed and then the glass is placed in the void. I think this is a direction for me in terms of an architectural technique/methodology, and also holds parallel to the ice, snow and water and how they similarily function.

connections?

This photo of a large mass of ice shifting between mountain peaks (Sourdough Peaks, Alaska) reminds me of how melted wax flows down a valley and solidifies.