Toolbox Self Portrait
For this assignment, we were to design and assemble a toolbox that also served as a nonrepresentational self-portrait. While sticking close to the original schematics we were given, I loosely based my toolbox around some of the art I had been working on over the past semester. The piece shows a lot of how much I try to control my materials to make a "perfect" final product even though the mistakes were still present. The inlay on the inside was both for aesthetics to create contrast with into colors of the final product as well as be a silver lining of sorts.
For any progress pictures of this project, please go to the W.I.P. page.
For any progress pictures of this project, please go to the W.I.P. page.
Ursula von Rydingsvard was one of seven children who grew up in Post-WWII in a refugee camp for the Polish in Germany. In an interview with Art 21, she stated "My home was one in which words were not used very often," and continued to speak how the more one talked the more suspicious they were. From this, she learned to gather information through visual means. She described the camp she lived at as wooden barracks where everything was made out of raw wood.
For her work, she stated that working hard was the answer to life. She works primarily in cedar as she finds it's much like paper and neutral. Her pieces consist of several layers of wood, marked and cut a piece or two at a time before being glued down, that are darkened with graphite. She uses the surface of her work to help communicate what she is feeling.
I was attracted to Ursula's work almost as soon as I saw it. There was something about how she manipulated the wood and made her cuts that transformed her pieces into being made out of something more inorganic. One of my favorite pieces from her is Drogo, pictured above, as it has a healthy mix of an animalistic quality with the inorganic feeling of the sculpted wood.
If she was currently in my culture 1 class working on this project, I don't think Ursula would do any real planning of the toolbox as she doesn't draw out her designs before making them since she finds that process to be too constrictive for her work. She would definitely use cedar and graphite and intuitively "speak" to the wood as she makes her cuts and mark making.
For her work, she stated that working hard was the answer to life. She works primarily in cedar as she finds it's much like paper and neutral. Her pieces consist of several layers of wood, marked and cut a piece or two at a time before being glued down, that are darkened with graphite. She uses the surface of her work to help communicate what she is feeling.
I was attracted to Ursula's work almost as soon as I saw it. There was something about how she manipulated the wood and made her cuts that transformed her pieces into being made out of something more inorganic. One of my favorite pieces from her is Drogo, pictured above, as it has a healthy mix of an animalistic quality with the inorganic feeling of the sculpted wood.
If she was currently in my culture 1 class working on this project, I don't think Ursula would do any real planning of the toolbox as she doesn't draw out her designs before making them since she finds that process to be too constrictive for her work. She would definitely use cedar and graphite and intuitively "speak" to the wood as she makes her cuts and mark making.