Studio Journal entry 1

Well, so far the idea that I have come up with for my thesis exhibition is, Nature Reclaiming Industry Over Time.  Basically what I mean by this is that I want to portray nature surviving and conquering industry.  I want to draw the viewers attention to the tiny details of life that we take for granted and neglect to recognize on a day to day basis.  However, I do not want my show to be preaching to the audience about nature and sustainability.  I want it to be ambiguous so that everyone can relate to it in their own personal way since I will be making art out of recycled materials that everyone is familiar with.  Last year I worked on a photo series where I collected about 100 coffee lids and photographed each one individually.  The point of this was not to show how much waste we consumers create, but to draw your attention to the simplicity of each coffee lids stains that everyone disregards because when their done drinking that cup of coffee, it just gets thrown away.  This project is not something that I want to carry out in my thesis, but it is a study that is helping me how to portray my ideas.  I actually do not want to include any photography in my show.

Some Ideas that I have come up with so far include a lounge chair that is fashioned out of wood, filled with dirt, and has grass growing out of it.  I want to be able to make this so it looks like there is a lounge chair that is emerging from the earth.  I want to cover my studio space with grass.  I have been working on designing what this will look like, and just started gathering supplies to make a small model of it to see if it will be feasible.  Another idea that I have is to some how forge recycled glass bottles together in some sort of suspended sculpture that will grow plants out of it hydroponically.  A third idea that I have but I think that this could potentially be a little cliche is to recycle about 1000 cans of soda/beer, etc.  and fill an entire wall with them wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling.  Once I thought of this, I then thought it could be interesting to create an image within these cans that you would be able to see from a distance when looking at the work.  This was kind of inspired by the designer, Stefan Sagmeister's banana instillation.  Since this work would allegedly be the largest work in my thesis I think that it is important that I think through what the message will be or design within the cans because I think that is what people will form their ideas around when viewing all of my work as a whole.