There are so many tools that can be found in an art classroom. Some of them are very useful in making sculpture pieces. In both art one and art two I gained a lot of experience with exacto-knives, so it was a useful skill coming into sculpture class. For my first major project I decided to use wire, a material I have never used before. There are many tools needed for wire but the two main tools I used for my piece were aviation snips and pliers. The aviation snips were very helpful when I need to cut wire and get a piece of wire at the length that I needed it. I also used the pliers to help bend and shape the wire. There are different types of pliers that can be used for a particular type of bend or shape. The wire tools were very helpful and the success I had on my piece was pleasing.
Looking back at the beginning of the semester, my knowledge of tools has improve and has allowed me to get a better understanding about how different tools work and are used. I learned so many different ways to use tools and work with those tools in my sculpture pieces. Even though I did not use the pottery wheel, the demos that were shown in class were very helpful, and would aid me in the future if I ever try it. During one of my projects I had to use the jigsaw. I did not know how to use it before this class and slowly has I was shown how to use it, I became more educated on how to use it. The demonstrations in the class were very helpful and gave me as well as the rest of the class options when making a piece of art.
My most successful piece out of this whole semester would have to be my first major piece I did in this class. The topic was a relief piece, which is making something 2d have some features that pop off the flat surface. When this project was introduced there were mini projects to help in the brainstorming process like cardboard relief, paper relief and clay relief. Those were great mini projects but in the end I wanted to do something completely different from cardboard, paper or clay. I tried thinking out of the box and looked around the art room to try and find a material I could use. I saw wire and thought that it would be a challenge to make that into a relief piece but I was willing to take that challenge. I then decided to do a wire elephant because my best friend loves elephants and I thought that show would love it. While creating the elephant I faced some challenged in bending the wire and shaping it but in the end I think that it turned out well. I wanted to fill in the elephant outline with wire as well and made the decision to wrap a thinner wire around it and make it look like a realistic elephant. The board that the elephant was going to be on was a square shaped board that was white. I painted the board with yellows and oranges and reds to make it look like an African sunset color. I absolutely love how this piece turned out because I worked really hard on it and I am extremely proud of this piece.
The project that became more enhanced when using a specific material that I chose would have to be my vessel project. This project was the most difficult and timely project that I have ever worked on in my art education. I decided to make a bowl out of rolled up magazines and shape it with a balloon. I wanted to use magazines because I felt like it would hold up better and add color to the bowl. Little did I know that each magazine roll would take me about ten minutes or more to do depending on the size. For each roll I had to fold strips of magazine then fold it again and then again and lastly roll it up. This was very time consuming but I do not regret using the magazine because of how successful the piece turned out. If I would have used a different material I do not think it would be as colorful or as stable. I decided to shape the bowl around a balloon because I thought the shape and size of the balloon was perfect for a nice sized bowl. I hot glued the rolls to the balloon hoping that after I would finish I could just pop the balloon and be done. I came to find out that the balloon stuck to the hot glue leaving white plastic on the bowl. I was frustrated at first because it would not come off but then I realized that it looked cool and unique so I decided to embrace that rubber balloon on my vessel piece.
My least favorite material I used would be clay because I am a perfectionist and it is hard to do that while the piece is still wet. Clay is a very challenging material to work with and over my art education I have been unable to master the skills in working with clay. I dealt with it by doing it and trying my hardest to get it how I wanted it. It was very hard to get clay how I wanted it and not knowing how it would look when it was dry was very stressful. Sculpture class involved a lot with working with clay so it was very challenging and stressful at times but it also taught me how to use different techniques and tools. I don’t like clay because it makes my hands extremely dry and it just never does what I had planned in my head. The process in making the project look exactly how I wanted it to, caused me to overthink about it and then mess up. The hardest part about working with clay is the point in your project where it rips or just looks terrible and you have to crush it and start over. This happened to me multiple over the semester and none of my pieces turned out how I wanted them to.