3d design semester reflection

This semester was my first time learning and making sculptures consistently. I haven’t made any sculptural art before so this class was a good opportunity to learn and make sculptures in a guided environment. I enjoyed this class and think I became much more comfortable with making three dimensional art. I especially enjoyed the sgraffito assignment and I think my sea urchins are probably my strongest work of the semester. I really enjoyed scraping off the underglaze to form the patterns and designs. Another process I enjoyed was embroidery. I chose to do my first two concentration pieces using it. Embroidery was very frustrating at times but the more I did it the better it got. However, I think my first concentration piece is a stronger artwork even though my stitches were much better on the second concentration. Most of the processes I struggled with have already been mentioned. I struggled with creating the clay animal onto which I would do the sgraffito and ended up switching to the sea urchins because they were easier to make out of clay. Te wire was also difficult at times because there were so many pieces meeting at one point.

My favorite pieces from this semester are probably my first concentration, my sea urchins, and my third concentration. I like my concentration #1 because it is so badly made. I rushed through most of it and my stitches have massive gaps between themselves. These gaps were purposeful but they don’t exactly look professional, but it is because of these gaps that I think it looks good. I like how the fabric shows through and I think this adds to the image. I chose my sea urchins because they worked out more or less how I planned them to go. The designs are easily interpreted and seen and each urchin has its own theme or repeated pattern. These urchins are probably my favorite piece that I made this year in art class. My third concentration is the first time that I used linoleum as my final product. I have always thought of linoleum as a way to create prints and not as its own media. I also like the third concentration because of the lines, this was also the first time I used a pattern on the white areas and not totally carving them down.

During the beginning of the semester I found myself doing more sculptures in the round. Some of these were assignments that had to be done in the round but for the wire clock I chose not to do a relief and instead do a sculpture in the round. I don’t know why I kept repeating this style of sculpture but it kept happening. This tendency changed and once the concentration period started I began doing almost exclusively relief work. The idea for these reliefs in my concentration came from really wanting to experiment using embroidery as a way to create portraits. So I made my concentration portraits and started sewing. After my first two concentrations which I made using embroidery I began looking for an alternative because embroidery was driving me crazy. So I began creating reliefs mostly out of linoleum. This trend continued for the rest of my concentration.