Thursday, April 30, 2020

Senior Spotlight: Ruby Wisniewski

cast bronze bee with iron and paper flowers
The piece below "Mobile Museum" is a traveling, living, museum that is designed to catalog a mile long path through Alfred, NY. The wheel is rolled to a location, where the user can explore and add samples, images, or notes to the archive as one discovers new things on the trail. The inner circle invites comfortable lounging for the user to sit and contemplate the space around them. Giving a feeling of playful exploration this museum is intended to allow one to explore the world with the eyes of a child.

 

"Out of my Depth" is representative of my feelings toward a double major in Art and Engineering during my third year in college. There was a great deal of balance necessary. I felt as though I had no direction (no rudder), and despite obviously being on a path somewhere, I wasn’t actually going anywhere. I couldn’t tell if my educational bedrock (of engineering textbooks) was supporting me or if I had run aground upon it. But it came to feel as though only I could see the ocean upon which I was trying to navigate. 


Inspired by honeycomb paper ornaments, "Nut to Hut" comments upon the origins of our resources. It originates as a piece of AstroTurf upon which acorns are “planted” and “watered”. It is then placed vertically to reveal that it resembles the outline of a tree cut in half. The piece is “opened” revealing that it is in fact a paper honeycomb tree. An ax is presented and it “cuts down” the tree. The vertical piece is closed and reopened 180 degrees to the other side creating a small domicile to which a front door and welcome mat are added. 

 


Inspired by Tibetan Singing bowls "Drum Circle" engages the community in experimentation and sound. Several musical bowls were cast using various combinations of aluminum, iron, and bronze to change their sound. 


The piece relied on auditory and tactile interaction. The bowls were arranged into a drum circle with a bright fiery centerpiece, and cushions forming a circle to sit on and play.


The large polished bronze bowl (representing the fire around which a community may gather) also calls back to the process in which all of the bowls were made in the foundry, born of fire in one cohesive effort, just as the drum circle itself recollects the community of the foundry.



Senior Spotlight: Molly Fitscher


Nature is not only my inspiration, but is an actual material in my practice. I have a growing and withering collection of found organic material such as leaves, moss, flowers, and bark. I use these materials in conjunction with glass and metal, to create my work.


By working with contrasting natural and artificial materials, it allows me to incorporate my passions, process of art making and nature together. I appreciate the process of art making. I value the experience in the making of art, and I believe it's just as prominent as the completed work. 


This was my first cast piece in both glass, and metal. By displaying the original piece of wood with the cast replicas by its sides, and tied fragments of my own recently cut hair I was trying to create a connection between myself, and my developing practice.


With this work I was more focused on the experiential factor. The process and involvement that took place in creating, made the end product gratifying. The know of how this was constructed, was my completed work. 

    

This series was exploratory for me. By hot casting over bark I constructed an exoskeleton. These exoskeletons are a reproduction of nature with a focus on the high textured forms it creates.

  

With nature being an inspiration and material within my practice, I habitually organize it. This custom is a way regulating my work so there is no repetition. This piece is me taking my organizational aspect of my practice with my nature influence, and incorporating it into a piece.


This installation is about form, light, and texture from my own imitation of nature. By looking at natural patterns I was able to create my own personal interpretation of nature, but with the materials of my choice.



Centrifugal casting in progress

Friday, April 24, 2020

Senior Spotlight: Mike Cannata


I construct modular components that incorporate environment in my sculptural work.  Figurative elements come out of blob-like forms that suggest body movement and emotion, and coil-built elements represent thought patterns.

      
I question the human connection to nature comparatively to the relationship with a mechanized daily life. I ask what sensations and thought patterns come from the self and what is imposed by society.



This work is about moments of movement and stillness, and how sensations and emotions pertain to experience.  I am somewhat of an obsessive thinker. Movement has always given me a sense of reprieve from this busyness.   Adrenaline inducing activities like skateboarding slows time; focuses, tells mind and body that what is happening is important, and reminds one that they are alive… I crave this perspective of sensory awareness. 


        

In the activity of dance, movements can be understood as the body speaking subconsciously. A spoken word seems to melt away the experience of an in improvisational contact dance with another.



Moments of stillness in meditation may be the opposite of adrenaline inducing, however they supply similar awareness of sensations and emotions of body and mind.  My art explores what is to be a hyperactive individual both mentally and physically, how observations of body sessions benefits myself and could benefit people with similar qualities.




Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Senior Spotlight: Caleb Scott


Make-believe was the most defining part of my childhood. There is a freedom the children experience when they get to envision their own fictional world. It is a freedom adults find much harder to find in a world where individuals have such little control over the greater details of life. I carry the stories and ideas created by my brother and I into my artwork as a source of inspiration. My work over the last two years has been building up to a show in which I attempt to capture some of the magic of my childhood fantasy world.


The centerpiece of this show was intended to be a large 3D game board table. Play is a very important concept in my art. It's only fitting to have actual games as part of my show. I wanted playing this game to be a very tactile experience. Therefore, all the pieces would be made of different metals, including bronze, aluminum, and iron. The table itself would have had visual and tactile textures including carved mountains and a machine tiled playing board.

  

The foundry is where I was developing the miniature figures that would act as game pieces. While my painting practice established the landscape and the wildlife, the beings that lived in this world were all three dimensional. I am sad to say that I only finished three of the figures before having to return home due to Covid-19. The following are examples of the finished and unfinished works along with some of their lore for explanation:



The guild warriors of Versh wield a modified fishing spear as their primary weapon. A Ta”rhee, a long rope with a weight at the end, is often used as an off-hand weapon to lasso enemies and pull them towards the warrior’s spear. This allows warriors to attack without compromising their footing in the muddy grounds of The Fens. The medicinal herb culture, developed in Versh, also gave rise to stimulant concoctions in the guild giving the warriors an advantage in strenuous mud combat.


Many dumrii (the largest and most brutish of the three species of humanoids) make their living as protectors for smaller farm settlements that can not afford the guild's services. Despite being viewed as a less intelligent species of delm, their larger stature and greater physical prowess makes them preferable guardians. They can fight longer than delmarie and are less concerned about spending hours trudging through mud. As with most of their species, they wield improvised weapons like large branch clubs or sharpened sticks.

 

            With the rise of elemental magic in the far west, The Fens is the first region to have access to mage craft. Many mages have traveled from the academy and found work both with the guild and as freelance beast hunters in the Fens. Others merely settle in Fen villages and contribute both as farmers and protectors. Most mages that choose to stay in the fens specialize in the elements of earth and water.


Sunday, April 12, 2020

Senior Spotlight: Jack Bancroft


I work in a multitude of materials, finding interest in them for a project until they are alien again. I do not like working with physical materials which I know well, I feel it may be wrong, as though I am taking the easy route.



Wax + String Studies
My sculptural work has been focusing on the understanding of self, and the mind.  The reasons for the things that I do and think that lead to the negative resolutions in my actual life.  Working through real life problems tends to just be the mode in which I work, as creating brings out the deepest fears, pain, and trauma that I will not allow myself to feel during regular waking life. Aspects of my work are trying to understand mental illness without accepting that it is the core of my problems, which tends to create dangerous metaphysical barriers.

Forged Steel Rings

            I have a love hate relationship with art, I think I always have.  To create is to suffer often times, but the reality on the other side is lighter, softer, and more real.  When life stops feeling real, when I stop feeling real, when I want nothing to do with art at all, I know that I have a real reason to continue making.  I have continued creating for years because I need that form, I need that deeply seated pain to have some sort of outlet.  In the worst and best ways possible, I need to be able to agonize through every emotion that I bottle up, every moment I suppress until I can find a better place to deal with it.

  
   
CAST IRON HEARTS for HEART HEALTH DAY 2019

            My art making process may appear to be neurotic, and detrimental, but I find few forms of creation to mean so much.  Without the immensity of the emotions that hold me down, the work cannot find a proper meaning or reality. Without the emotions dousing the entire work, from physical beginning to end, the piece does not feel grounded in any truthful reality.

            Aside from physical sculptural works, I also work with video and sound as mediums.  On many projects I will try to include some digital media aspect with them.