Creative Process

What I learned about the creative process...

In the making of this project I learned a lot about myself and my own creative process. What I came to realize is that I am a sprinter. I enjoy starting a work and finishing it in one sitting. Even if that sitting is an extremely long portion of time (days or weeks) I find it hard for me to start and stop my stream of thought in a discontinuous manner. This technique did not benefit me during this experience. I was forced to space my time out between two entire semesters, with many intermediate steps in between. In researching various learning techniques for class I came across studies that implied that prioritizing and organizing your work into digestible pieces was an effective strategy. 

I found that methods such as Pomodoro's method were least effective for me since setting goals by the amount of time spent working was too discontinuous for me. I disliked when I timer told me when to take a break as opposed to taking a break when I felt ready to. When creating my piece, I found that prioritizing my work into smaller sub-goals, organized by importance, was very effective. I found that without prioritizing, I often waste time completing small tasks that do not have as much of an impact on my final product, as opposed to larger tasks that would impact my product much more. Upon research, I learned this is actually a proven characteristic of some human behavior (Zhu). By organizing and reordering my tasks by importance, I was better able to complete my work with less mindless wandering and better use of the time I had. 

Zhu, Meng, et al. “The Mere Urgency Effect.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 9 Feb. 2018, academic.oup.com/jcr/article/45/3/673/4847790. 

Methods

In creating my piece I relied heavily on my own experimentation. After learning through media reviews that other artists had used heat in order to warp the shape of their plastics, I spent a large amount of time figuring out the best ways to make this work for my own purposes. The problem was that I had found very little direct work that mimicked what I wanted to achieve. By adding light heat to plastic, I found that it would shrink specific portions of the material allowing me to obtain a more natural look to the piece. By adding more intense heat for longer periods of time via a lighter, I was able to melt portions of the plastic that would adhere to each other if joined when the pieces were still melted. Through this, I was able to completely assemble my work using no adhesives outside of this melting and joining method. The planet itself is made of interlocking metal sheets cut from aluminum soda cans. Pictures of individual flowers and prototype pieces below.

While going through this process the problem of color and definition within the piece also became apparent. Due to the fact that the entire flower portion of the piece was composed of clear plastic, it looked undefined and unappealingly messy. In seeking solutions I came to the discovery that lighting the piece from the bottom would create a more defined shape in the flower portion of the section and also allow me to incorporate color at the same time. In my first prototypes (shown below) I simply incorporated a LED light strip inside the planter. For the final version, a different light strip was obtained and adhered to the bottom of the planter so it would be angled up and also programmable to specific light settings. 

Final Work 

The final work was made in  a larger planter design than the prototype using the methods described above. The piece was displayed in a dark foam core box in order to minimize light pollution wen viewed in a room with a high ambient light. Images of the final work below.