Mixed Media |
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Winter House was inspired by miniature artists Ofra Lapid and Joshua Smith and the concept of junk sculpture. Although it’s not exactly a traditional junk sculpture, it has junk materials to create detail, form and space like one would see in an actual house. The winter and snowy theme symbolizes the warmth, comfort, and appreciation of the house itself and the shelter and memories it provides people with.
Critical Investigation Research:
I was inspired by the 'junk sculpture' and 'assemblage' concept; using cast away products that are no longer useful and using them to create art and using products that are intentionally being misused for art instead of what they were originally made for. With 'junk sculptures', the point is to not buy anything and use strictly junk. The only thing that was purchased for this project was more hot glue-gun refill sticks.
I was also inspired by 'miniature art'; creating tiny replicas of objects or people that are much more bigger in scale. Two artists which I drew my inspiration from were Ofra Lapid and Joshua Smith. Also, I was inspired by the series of buildings of Department 56's 'Snow Village'.
I was also inspired by 'miniature art'; creating tiny replicas of objects or people that are much more bigger in scale. Two artists which I drew my inspiration from were Ofra Lapid and Joshua Smith. Also, I was inspired by the series of buildings of Department 56's 'Snow Village'.
Joshua Smith
Joshua Smith is a miniature and ex-stencil artist from Norwood, South Australia. He is most known for his incredibly detailed and realistic looking miniature building sculptures. He draws inspiration from rusty, urban buildings from cities such as Sydney and Hong Kong to create his artworks. Smith uses materials such as cardboard, plastic and medium-density fiberboard and creates buildings at an architectural scale factor of 1:20. Smith has had a career in art for 17 years and has been showcased all over the world in countries like England, Germany, Japan in more than 100 galleries.
Inspiration: Smith's artwork inspired me to create very detailed decorations for my mixed media house. I used some materials to match the same texture as the actual objects as Smith does in his sculptures, for example, the fabric I used for the covers on the bed or the wooden sticks for the porch. For the other junk materials, I was inspired to build them using clean craftsmanship and realistic elements as Smith does in his art.
Bouchard, Fabien. "The impressive ultra-realistic models of Joshua Smith". Ufunk. ParseError. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://www.ufunk.net/en/artistes/joshua-smith-models/
Sierzputowski, Kate. "Miniature Displays of Contemporary Urban Buildings by Joshua Smith". thisiscolossal. Colassal, 2017. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/03/miniature-urban-buildings-by-joshua-smith/
"Biography". iknowjoshuasmith. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://www.iknowjoshuasmith.com/about/
Sierzputowski, Kate. "Miniature Displays of Contemporary Urban Buildings by Joshua Smith". thisiscolossal. Colassal, 2017. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/03/miniature-urban-buildings-by-joshua-smith/
"Biography". iknowjoshuasmith. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://www.iknowjoshuasmith.com/about/
Ofra Lapid
The other artist I was inspired by was Ofra Lapid; a New York City artist who creates interior design, drawings and other mediums of art. In her series of sculptures called, 'Broken Houses', she takes images from a man in North Dakota who photographs abandoned and decaying rural buildings and rebuilds them as miniature versions of the original.
Inspiration: Lapid's use of detail and paper material inspired me to create the foundation of the walls, floors and ceilings of my house using paper and cardboard. The illusion of space within her artwork is 2-dimensional and I kept that in mind as I used materials like the blue foam and the nature design wrapping paper on my house sculpture.
Lapid, Ofra. "Broken Houses". ofralapid. Ofra Lapid, 2017. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://www.ofralapid.com/broken-houses/
"Broken Houses". bldgwlf. BLDGWLF, 2018. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://bldgwlf.com/tag/ofra-lapid/
Lynch, E.D.W. "Broken Houses, Scale Models of Decaying Buildings by Ofra Lapid". laughingsquid. AN ELITE CAFEMEDIA LIFESTYLE, 1995-2018. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. https://laughingsquid.com/broken-houses-scale-models-of-decaying-buildings-by-ofra-lapid/
"Broken Houses". bldgwlf. BLDGWLF, 2018. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. http://bldgwlf.com/tag/ofra-lapid/
Lynch, E.D.W. "Broken Houses, Scale Models of Decaying Buildings by Ofra Lapid". laughingsquid. AN ELITE CAFEMEDIA LIFESTYLE, 1995-2018. Web. 23 Jan, 2018. https://laughingsquid.com/broken-houses-scale-models-of-decaying-buildings-by-ofra-lapid/
Planning:
With 'junk sculpture' in mind, I began to gather materials and objects that I no longer needed or things I was about to throw away (to an extent). As I looked at the objects I collected, I tried to think of ways I could use them to make a miniature house; could they possibly be furniture, flooring or make up the walls or the ceiling? As I go on with my project, I'll find a way to include the junk I've collected.
As I look back on my planning, I should have thought of a better way I was to include my inspiration. Most junk sculptures look like they are a giant mass of junk that somehow creates a figure or sculpture of anything that makes sense; sort of like an illusion. But my house is more of using junk to create a sculpture with different features. It won't just be junk in the shape of a house, it'll be junk that helps create an actual look of the house's characteristics and the objects that a house contains.
I modeled my vision of the house after house designs that personally connect to me and the neighborhood I grew up in; Milwaukee Bungalow. I also imagined the landscape and environment around the house to be set in winter, so I found some supplies like white, opaque Styrofoam to be the snow on the house.
As I look back on my planning, I should have thought of a better way I was to include my inspiration. Most junk sculptures look like they are a giant mass of junk that somehow creates a figure or sculpture of anything that makes sense; sort of like an illusion. But my house is more of using junk to create a sculpture with different features. It won't just be junk in the shape of a house, it'll be junk that helps create an actual look of the house's characteristics and the objects that a house contains.
I modeled my vision of the house after house designs that personally connect to me and the neighborhood I grew up in; Milwaukee Bungalow. I also imagined the landscape and environment around the house to be set in winter, so I found some supplies like white, opaque Styrofoam to be the snow on the house.
Planning Sketches:
This was my initial sketch for the house. I was originally thinking of having walls on each side of the house with no inside details, but then I drew more sketches without a wall so the inside would be exposed. At first, I wanted the house to be very miniature, like 6 inches (now it is 9 1/2 inches tall). I wanted to include tiny clay people originally.
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In this sketch, I was planning what the inside of the living room would look like. I knew at this time of planning that I wanted there to be no wall on one side of the house, I just didn't know which one. I also wanted the starry paper material to either be the ceiling or the roof. (It's the living room ceiling now).
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Another sketch of the entire exterior and the interior of the house with more ideas and measurements. In this sketch, there are stairs for the porch and the upstairs but I did not add that into my product. I also had two windows for the front of the house on the first floor.
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Planning Materials:
After my in-process critique, I was given tips on how to keep good craftsmanship. Although it is a junk sculpture at heart, it should have the clean cut craftsmanship to make it art. After this, I realized that I needed more junk. To make my project really meaningful, I'll have to add more detail. If I could find more materials, I could more make miniature furniture and wall decorations, carpeting and more.
Process:
Materials Used: Strips of leftover fabric, Kleenex® box, Rice Krispies® box, old belts, leftover Christmas tissue paper, broken and old pencils, white, fawn and Pacific coast acrylic paint, cotton, styrofoam egg holder, blue, white and red foam, a Halloween necklace, cardboard jewelry boxes, wooden sticks, a shoelace, paperclips, a glass prism, Christmas wrapping paper, a straw, cotton swabs, little toy bowling pins, chain of a necklace, magazine paper, an old white shirt, beads, string, and hot glue.
1. First off, I started with my idea of what the porch will look like. I used two miniature boxes that were glued together for the foundation of the house. After that, I began to use cardboard to construct the first floor of the house. I thought that I could've used something more junk themed rather than using cardboard, but I needed something to hold up the structure and keep it secure. Cardboard is easy for cutting specific shapes, but when it comes to flexibility it differs. Some of the cardboard I collected is very fragile and bends very easily leaving a crease through it while other cardboard is very hard to cut and the edges rip off to look very messy.
2. I started to create designs for the flooring I wanted for the rooms of the house. For the kitchen, I used a Kleenex® box cut into diamond shapes to create . this was very difficult to do. I would accidentally line the diamonds up unevenly and the pattern would start to tilt, forcing me to add tiny diamonds to fill in the cracks. To cut the diamonds, I drew a grid on the back and would draw slanted lines through them to create diamond shapes.
3. From there, I started to work on the walls of the house all individually before I glued them on to make it easier to manipulate the materials I was putting on them. I would measure each side of the cardboard in order for them to align perfectly. I worked on the front wall first which included the door, the porch's roof and a window on the second floor.
4. For the longest wall, I needed to use some sort of material that looked like siding on the side of a house. I had a lot of used up and broken pencils, so I decided to use that. I would cut the pencils in two halves to cover more surface area with less pencils, align them horizontally against the cardboard and hot glue them down. Before that, I painted the cardboard yellow because I noticed how the cardboard underneath the diamond cut outs in the kitchen didn't look that nice, so I wanted to try something new.
5. Then there was the roof. I decided I didn't have to combine cardboard together with hinges or hot glue to make a roof, it would be more convenient if I used a cereal box instead. It turned out to be the perfect shape I needed for the roof top. I painted black over top of the cereal box so the shingles I would glue over top of it wouldn't look as weird. I started to glue the shingles, which were made out of one of my old, broken belts, onto the roof in a pattern of short, long, short. I ran out before I finished, so I had to use another broken belt which was brown and black, so I made a pattern from that also.
6. I used tissue paper with purple designs for the wallpaper inside the house. I hot glued each corner of the wall then carefully stretched the tissue paper out on it and pressed the corners and cut off the remaining paper along the sides. To cut off the excess paper around the window holes, I carved lines in the tissue of the hole and just folded it around the cut of the hole to make the edges look better. The porch was also made out of wooden sticks; I would cut them if they started to hang off the porch and use those small pieces were they fit.
7. The next part of my process was to start working on the front and back wall of the house and also the inside walls, ceilings and furniture. As I looked at my materials, I imagined what I could make out of them and what furniture a house needed. I began to imagine chairs, a bed, a house plant, a lamp, etc. I used materials like foam, styrofoam, wood, cardboard and just junk like pencil and pen tips to start creating furniture. After this, I glued the first wall up (before it was done), and lined the edges were I glued the wall to the floor with a shoelace to make it look cleaner.
To create the bricks for the outside wall, I used blue foam to cut out rectangular shapes like bricks and hot glued them into a pattern on the cardboard. I left a little space for the roof of the porch to be placed, which I made out of the rest of the Kleenex® box and a few flat, wooden sticks.
To create the bricks for the outside wall, I used blue foam to cut out rectangular shapes like bricks and hot glued them into a pattern on the cardboard. I left a little space for the roof of the porch to be placed, which I made out of the rest of the Kleenex® box and a few flat, wooden sticks.
8. I started to glue the rest of the walls onto the base structure and began to paint some of the walls on the inside to distinguish the rooms from one another; the bathroom was painted a green and the kitchen a light brown. At the same time, I was gluing an old, white shirt to the ceiling of the roof. And when I was done doing this, I began to work on the second floor.
9. I started to work on completely finishing the first floor, furniture and all. For the kitchen, I created a cabinet, table, chairs, broom, house plant, stove, sink and window with curtains. For the living-room I made a couch, a book shelf, a semi circle table, a hanging wall shelf, window, small television screen and a rug by the front door. Then, after all of these were created, I glued the second floor on top of it.
I should have added a way for more light to be seen because upon viewing the first floor, it's very dark.
I should have added a way for more light to be seen because upon viewing the first floor, it's very dark.
10. For the second floor, I wanted to create a more artistic carpeting. I cut magazine paper into squares for the bathroom floor and cut red foam into swirls for the hallway carpeting. Underneath, I painted the cardboard white to offset the colors better.
11. Then, like the first floor, I began to create furniture for the second floor. I created a tub with curtains, a sink, a bed, desk, stool, a lamp and a chandelier. Once I was done, I moved on to finishing the exterior.
Finally, putting the finishing touches. I dabbed white paint onto the bricks made of foam and the siding made out of pencils to truly give this house a feeling of comfort and coziness; giving it meaning as to why someone would want to possibly go inside. As I did this, I also glued cotton that I pulled off from the swabs I used for the desk. I glued the roof on but not all of the way so people could still see the second floor of the house. The house was complete.
Reflection:
- As I compare and contrast my house against my inspiration, I realize that I did not create a sculpture as detailed and accurately to scale as Joshua Smith's miniature buildings and I did not use a lot of 2-dimensional materials to create the illusion of Ofra Lapid very often as I was inspired to.
- At first, I was very measurement heavy with how long everything was but after awhile I began to use rulers less and less and just began to guess how large and small I should cut materials. This resulted in having a kitchen table appearing bigger than the oven and kitchen sink.
- I could have thought of a better and cleaner way for viewers to see inside the house. The roof is difficult to keep open for people to see the inside and I think if I were more creative, I would have thought of a way to make the interior visible but also make the house look aesthetically pleasing and designed.
- What is also difficult to see is the first floor because it is so dark. I could have put in more windows or possibly have found a way to put artificial light into the house.
- Overall, I think it came out looking better than I thought it would. I worked for hours upon hours on it so I hope people will enjoy looking at it.
ACT Questions:
1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork.'
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?