Respond and Confront

Artist Statement:

For this project we had to research a topic of interest and create a 2-D representation of the topic then our 3-D representations. My topic was about Koala conservation. I chose this topic because I am very interested in climate change and one of the effects of climate change is a decline in the koala population. This effects koalas because when the temperatures rise wildfires become more common, a koalas habitat is trees and in warm places that are usually dry, also koalas are very slow moving animals so when there are fires a lot of times they are not able to escape. For the 2-D representation I made a collage that has pictures and words that represent my topic, it has quotes regarding my topic and I drew a koala in the center to connect everything. My original plan for my project was to make a koala and a tree with a lighter to represent the rising temperatures, but then I decided instead of a tree with a lighter to make a thermometer so the message is more obvious.

I stared off by making the koala, I first made everything solid and then went back and hollowed it out. Then I made the thermometer by rolling out a thin slab and cutting it in the shape of a slab and adding numbers and lines. I also made a thick slab to put the koala and the thermometer on and I added a quote to the front of the slab. The quote I chose was: "At least 70 percent of the koala population perished".

Unfortunately my project blew up in the kiln but if it did not then I was going to glaze the koala with grey for the body and black for the eyes, nose and claws. I was going to glaze the slab green to represent the trees and then I was going to glaze the thermometer white with the red temperature line.