"Work and Pray, Live on Hay"

 The final product ended up rather large. I wanted to create an interactive piece, so I designed a sort of tunnel that one could crawl through. I was pleased with how it turned out. While it was easy enough to put together, moving it was a strenuous ordeal. I would like to thank all of the students who kindly helped me cart it around.

 Texture was important. The inside of the tunnel had a shaven look and was sharp to the touch. The outside of the tunnel was softer and fluffier. I filled the tunnel floor withy loose hay; I wanted anyone who dared crawl through it to be fully surrounded by the materials.

Utter Madness

Hay. For my modular creation I chose to use hay. I created a large list of possible objects, and was attracted to two automatically. One was eggs, the other was chicken wire. Neither of those ideas played out well. However, I had made several sketches of other options:  hay, cloth, cans, and rocks. Hay bales won out in the end. I was attracted to their size, texture, and smell. I wanted to see what kind of structure I could make out of this familair material.

 I made several designs out of the bales in my backyard. I ended up creating a slightly different structure in the class room.

The Pinecone Complete

The Pinecone has been completed. It evolved from a simple sketch to cardboard reality. I am pleased with how it turned out. However, it still has more I can do to make it better. I am going through the process of refining it further. I plan on creating a new look for where the stem meets the petals and reworking several of the petals.

Peacefully Chaotic and Deathly

 For my 'harmonious' image, I wanted to illustrate how death interrupts one's life. I had created an all over pattern originally. Then, I cut across it horizontally with a river of text. More text pours out of this river at a different angle drawing one's eye downward. Unfortunatley I cannot position this they way it is meant to be seen. Once I gain access to photo editing software, I will adjust this blog.

For my 'contrasting' image, I chose to create 'chaos' out of 'peace'. I wanted to inject a little madness into a composition based on peaceful words and thoughts. Cutting and mashing different prints of the original image produced a hectic composition that I found favourable.


Cutting the mat board proved to be problematic. I had to cut several pieces in order to get a clean edge. I have discovered that I cannot cut straight...even with a ruler. This is an area I hope to improve upon.

A Picture is worth a thousand Words

I spent along time searching for different and interesting fonts and words for my images.Who knows how many obituaries fell prey to my 'harmonius' project. I made several variants for each piece. Each time I would find at least one aspect of the image that I found favourable. I would then copy it and tweak or rework the rest of it.

Photo Safari

Pattern; Translation;Progressive
Splendora, Backyard; 2:30pm, Wednesday

Pattern; Informal
SHSU campus; 2010

Rhythm; Translation; Progressive
Splendora, Backyard; 2:15pm, Wednesday

Rhythm, Translation; Informal
Galveston; Tuesday

Texture; Translation, Rotation, Reflection; Informal
Splendora, Backyard; 2:35pm, Wednesday

Texture; Translation; Formal
Splendora, Backyard; 2:38pm, Wednesday

Pattern; Translation; Progressive
Galveston; Tuesday

Texture; Translation, Rotation;Formal
Splendora, Front yard; 2:40pm, Wednesday

The Mighty Pinecone Comes to Life

For my grande cardboard creation, I chose to recreate nature's lovely little pinecone.
Before I got to the cardboard, I made a few sketches of the object itself. Then I sketched out a few ideas on how each segment of the pinecone might constructed out of my material.

After the initial planning, I created a stem out of long sheet of cardboard. After wetting the material, it easily rolled into an effective pinecone stem. The next step involved cutting petals shapes of  other pieces of cardboard. This was the most time consuming part of the project so far. I tested several different ways of layering the petals before starting to glue them into place.

So far the pinecone is coming along nicely. I am now concentrating on adjusting the undersides of the glued on petals and attaching the remaining ones to the stem.

Human Dots

I attempted to make my photograph compositions line up with my dot compositions. When examined together, one can see that this was accomplished. However, when viewed by themselves they are not much to look at. 

Transforming human beings into dot compositions sounded easy at first, but I had a lot of difficulty with this project.  Turns out, it wasn't as simple as I originally thought. I would like to do another shoot to see if I could come up with more successful results.