lunchtime lecture- Bill Price

Britney Boswell

lunchtime lecture 

Bill Price

January 29,2012

The Bill Price lecture was a lot more interesting then I had anticipated. i am not a sculpturist but learning about the Gold Smith's conference was very interesting. Bill Price attended the Society of North American Goldsmith's (SNAG) conference in Seattle, Washington. Last May over seven thousand people attended this three day conference. SNAG is usually printed in a metals magazine shown through out the country. This specific conference had the FLUX theme.

FLUX means a type of change. Many things are changing in the metal making world. From material to processes the metals world is expanding. At the conference there were a lot of objects being displayed, Price says this was a little surprising. Altogether they had fifteen galleries. The galleries ranged from master metal making works to students works. In the pictures I could tell each gallery was a little different and all of the pieces connected the gallery itself. In on of the galleries it was full of pastel colors and each piece was made of metal and some other material, such as ceramics, or glass. 

Along with the galleries, there were a series of lectures. According to Price,  one lecturer, David Wong, showed everyone some of his techniques. He could create fine surface texture and patterns using wax.They also would be able to contain some sort of inner light. In the picture he showed the objects were gleaming at a distance. He learned new types of casting while he attended more lectures.

Finally he came to his close and ended with a machine he found most interesting, and so did I. It was intended for jewelry stores. But Price was curious if it would be useful in schools and for educations purposes. So luckily they have loaned us one. When he said that I got really excited and then I remembered that I don't even know how to use one. But I would like to learn how. He showed us a lot of examples of some that were made. At this moment in time Adam hawk is still testing it out and they are thinking of having an upper level student course on it in the fall to see if the people can expand their market to education and not just jewelry stores.

The lecture overall was very good and interesting to me. It was short but I got alt out of it. The only thing that i wish was different was that I wish there was more images of the actual art works. When the lecture was over we got to go over into studio 1 and watch the machine in action. The lecture was very inspiring and I may take  a sculpture class next semester to see how I like it. I would love to create something three dimensional like the artworks I saw today.  

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my assignment to combive text with other vecter items

visiting artist lecture #2

Britney Boswell

Paper on visiting artist lecture, Chris Irick

Feb. 23, 2012

            When I first walked into the room I was very excited to hear another artists lecture after Mel Chin. But unfortunately it didn’t surprise me as much as Mel Chin’s but it was an ok lecture. I just think she could have made the lecture a little more interesting.

            Chris was born in California and has moved at least twenty times through out her life. She has had many jobs including working at the Smithsonian and Wailing Museum in New Bedford, Dallas. Today she is a teacher but is still working hard in her sculpting.

            Since she was sixteen she had been interested in two things, jewelry making, which is what she does now, and different cultures. These are the two places that she gets her artwork from. Other places she has pulled references are things like, turbines, planes, birds flight, submarines, dark creepy hallways, stair wells, and gutters. All of these things have influenced many of her pieces.

            While her introduction was slow and a little boring her artwork was not. From the first piece she showed, to the last I was interested. The first thing she showed was a box shaped about four inches tall and wide. It was covered in train tracks and had an eerie feeling to it. All of her works had a lot of the same feel. They were very dark and put me into a world I didn’t know. Just the way that these tiny circular objects drew your eye back into the space was amazing.

             Another interesting thing that she told us about were submarines and a scientific work called a Jirocter. The submarine she showed us was one of the first plans of how to attack on sea. A man would climb in and pedal to the enemy boat. He would then drill a hole into the boat and shove the bombs in and pedal away before the bombs went off. Irick then stated, “ That plan never worked.” She also showed us another invention done by the Germans. They found out that this device didn’t work either. It was called a Jirocter. It was ship like vessel that was suppose to carry one person. It started off in the water and if something bad happened it was suppose to be able to take off and fly with out any problems. Unfortunately, this invention was a failure as well.

            Her pieces based off of these works were both necklaces, but the more unique of the two was the one that took the form of the Jirocter. It was a necklace made of silver and gold. It took on the form of the Jirocter when it wasn’t worn but when you picked it up it took one the form of a necklace that fit perfectly around you neck. It really stuck out to me the most out of most of her works. Not only because it was a unique piece, but it was based off of a unique invention.

            Later on in Irick’s life she began looking more to birds and flight patterns. She made these two pieces based on the movements of birds. One piece she created the movements of birds known as starks. They were in huge clusters and moved in a way that they created these enormous forms. She wanted to show the movement of this in an artwork so she took it and created a broche. She also spliced it to where as the broche moved you saw a different image. She also used this technique in another piece about bird movement. The only difference was that she went from three thousand birds to one pigeon. She said that pigeons weren’t just rats with wings. They actually had some of the most beautiful and powerful flight pattern of all bird. Looking at her piece on that, I knew she was right.

            Over all Chris Irick’s work was very inspiring. Although I am not a sculpture major, I can use a lot of the same research ideas she does. Most of her sketch books are filled with ideas and images she will be able to reference back to one day. And I need to get into the habit of that myself. She is a talented artist and a talented jewelry maker. 

my save the date for my wedding =) 2nd inclass design

first text work

exterior and interior!!!

trial run- mine is the one below the first.

still working on this!!!

still working on this

Dwayne 1

Mel Chin Art lecture (lecture 1)

Britney Boswell

Visiting Artist Lecture- Mel Chin

Feb. 7, 2012

When I first walked into the auditorium I thought that it was going to go by so slow, but to my surprise, it didn't. Chin had me hooked in the first five seconds. He walked up to the stage and took the microphone in his hand then ran to the middle of the stage and started to sing an Elvis Presley song. Everyone began to laugh then a crowd of people all stood up and threw bananas at him. I was so confused, but then he began his opening and surprisingly it was about bananas. 

The first thing I began to notice about Mel Chin was how much he cared about the society. Near the end a lady asked him if he studied science because he knows so much about the environment, pollutions, and many more science related topics. He said he was never a scientist. But he stated, "When it's something that you love and you base your entire existence on that one thing, then you want to learn about it and be able to discuss it with people who do know something about it." That really caught my attention. We tend to forget that art is so important. It's great to make a piece of art on just how you feel, but to make a piece of art based on something more important than ourselves is much more powerful and meaningful.

  Mr. Chin went through plenty of his art works. His meanings ranged from the presidents, to planets, to the environment, to our soldiers in Iraq, and even to past wars and poverties. He has also used many mediums for his work. Most of his work was sculpture, but he also painted, animated, created lingere, and even sang as a form of his art. He sang a song to depict the soldiers that were coming home from Iraq and Afganistan that were overdosing on prescription pills and dying in their sleep. He would sing the song in a different voice trying to make you feel part of the life of that soldier. 

Something that happened to him really made me learn a new lesson for my Ipc course. He made a depiction of Pluto the planet after doing a lot of research. He later found out that his work was being depicted as an african tribe leaders helmet. He says that he called up the man giving the tours and told him thank you. Chin used a name very close to an african term that was common and he did not think about it at the time. He said that next time he will be more careful. 

One piece I found interesting was a piece he did on beauty of women. He took the lingere of magazines that were defined as beautiful and then he looked at other places around the whorl to see what they defined as beauty. He later decided to try to put the signs of beauty into something ugly, like the turtles he was interested in at the time. so he created a turtle shell covered with the dainty thin material of lingere with those printed images of beauty on it. Its turns out it wasn't so beautiful. What Chin realized was that he spent so much time on this piece of work, which I believe he considered a failure, he didn't see the number one thing he should have noticed. The turtle, the turtle he based his piece on is on the verge of extinction. He wants to go and do more research into that. 

Mel Chin ended on giving us a pitch. There is a fundraiser called "fundreds." They are fake hundreds that children around the United States are drawing and sending in to help the city of New Orleans lead levels decrease. If they can raise up to 300 million fundreds then the government will match that with real hundreds to match the 300 million. News reports state that if this project works in New Orleans then Congress may help the rest of the country as well. They need all of the help they can from all over the country. Hopefully New Orleans will see change soon.

I am very happy that I got to go see Mel Chin speak. There was really nothing that happened that I didn't like. I really liked the art work and the artist. It was continuously interesting to me. He kept me on my feet the entire time. I also loved that he is an artist that can do almost anything. I hope that one day I will be able to do the same. 

so far...

another idea i had. i just really liked the "mid evil tones" so i printed it too lol