Concentration

In this project I created a concentration series. A concentration series is a series of art work that is made up of separate pieces that are related to each other. In this case, I created two separate pieces of art. The first one was made up of 5 of my favorite soccer players from different countries around the world. The second was made of 4 of my favorite hockey players from around the world. I used almost all sculpey to make these two pieces of art. The connection between the two was sports and geography, which are two of my favorite things. The idea was to compare players from different nations and the sports they play. The soccer players were Emre Can from Germany, Sadio Mane from Senegal, Lionel Messi from Argentina, Gianluigi Buffon from Italy, and Mohammed Salah from Egypt. The hockey players were Patrice Bergeron from Canada, Tuukka Rask from Finland, Alex Ovechkin from Russia, and Brent Burns from the United States. One element of art I brought to the project was color. I used colors of each country's flag for the base of each figure, and used color for each player's jersey.

One composition rule and technique I used was formal balance because there was equal weight on all sides of each piece I made. The process of creating these figures was that I would start by making each torso and legs and arms, and then I would proceed to make details like the hair or helmets and face. My project evolved in many, many ways over the time period I was working on it. My original idea was to create a map of Europe and also South America and to make each country out of things the country is known for. Then I switched to making each country out of food, but realized the food would go bad. Finally, I came up with the idea of using sports players to represent different countries.

This artwork is meaningful to me because I loved tying together sculpture, sports, and geography. Geography has always been one of my favorite subjects, and I play hockey and soccer, so it was meaningful to me to incorporate these things into my artwork. If I could improve something in these pieces I might spend more time on the small details of each player. One thing I am proud of is how the soccer players resemble the people I made them after. The most challenging part of this project was working with the fine details with a malleable material like sculpey. This shows my strengths and weaknesses as a learner because I was able to adapt to and improve with a material like sculpey.