Lots and Lots of School Projects!

School work has really been keeping me busy! There is only about one month left of school and it is CRUNCH TIME! Now is the time for me to play Billy Joel's song, "Pressure!" I have been working on several projects for both my classes. It has also been difficult to find the time to look for a part-time job. So until I get an actual job, I am making my living with my art and selling some items on the internet.

I just completed a real crazy project for my 3D art class. This project involves transforming part of the human body into something unusual or wierd--kind of like a mutation. My project involved turning the female body, specifically the breasts and the navel, into hot and cold water valves and turning the navel into a water faucet. This is definitely one of the strangest pieces of art that I have ever created, but my teacher loved the idea, so I went with it. Oh, what we students will do just to get an 'A' ! This piece will definitely NOT end up hanging over the fireplace in the living room!

This Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. I will be selling my art and crafts at a Christmas Bazaar at the Vineyard Church. This is the Vineyard's first Christmas bazaar and I hope it is a real success! All this week I have been busy preparing for it.

I also have been coming into the Ceramics class at BSU one extra day per week so that I can have a large enough body of ceramic works to show for the end of the semester. So far, I have four pieces that have been bisque fired, three that are glazed and finished, one that I have to paint/glaze, and two other pieces that are drying out, waiting to be bisqued fired. Then I have two others that I have started to sculpt, but they are not finished.

My 3DArt Class Project Photos

I have posted photos of the latest projects I have made in my 3-D Art Class at BSU. The bottom two photos are two views of the soap sculpture that was actually my mid-term. This sculpture will be in a student art show sometime in mid-November and I am excited about that. It has been a while since I have been in any art exhibit that was at Boise State University.

The top two photos are from a 3D Book project, which was our last assigned class project. For my project, I made my version (in miniature) of the no-kill cat shelter, Simply Cats, where I did some volunteer work this past summer. The very top photo was a close-up of one of the rooms in the shelter that was especially for the fat cats who are on a diet and exercise program to lose weight. My camera doesn't have the capability of getting really tiny details, so this is as detailed as I could get. You can see the one cat that is on a treadmill machine and the sign above says, "Think Thin!" The other two rooms are the allergy room (cats with allergies) and the kitten room.

The text that you see running through the front of the room are the names of the cats that were in that room at the time I was doing the volunteer work or a name or description of the type of cats that were in that room, like 'Fat Cats' or 'Sneezy Felines' etc.

You can't see it but some of the signs on the walls in the other rooms say, "I'm not allergic to love!" "I don't care what time it is--feed me!" "Another day, another cat-tastrophe!" "I'm not fat, I'm fluffy!" And in the allergy room, I have a bottle of medicine that is labeled, "Freeze-a-Sneeze Allergy Medicine."

The cat project hasn't been graded yet so I can't take it home. There is a chance that it might also be in the student art show but I don't know for sure.

Honorable Mention for Mid-Term Soap Sculpture!

I am happy to say that I actually won a prize this week for my mid-term soap sculpture for my 3-D art class! They had four prizes for the best sculptures and I won Honorable Mention! This was in a class that has about 25-30 students. My prize was a crazy but cute pair of Boise Bronco flip-flops that have little footballs on them. They actually fit too! I have posted a photo of what I won. I will post a photo of my soap sculpture as soon as I can get the film developed.

The other great thing that happened this week was that I got paid for the sale of three prints that sold during my October show at the Garden City Library. Money is very tight for me right now and every little bit helps a lot!

My goal this week is to finish my portrait commission that I have been working on for two months. It is almost done. The sooner I finish this portrait, the sooner I can get paid for it and be free to prepare for the Christmas holidays and the last few months of school that I have left.

Mid-Terms, Homework and Project Runway

I am SO busy with homework right now! I just found out that I have a mid-term this week for 3-D art class. It is a take-home mid-term. My assignment is to make some sort of sculpture out of soap (Dove or Ivory). The soap is given to us in class on Tuesday and it is due Thursday. So we only have Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday to work on it. I did a practice sculpture with some Dove soap this weekend because my sculpturing skills are not nearly as good as my drawing and painting skills. You should have seen my art room! There were so many soap shavings it looked like it had snowed in there! Once we get our soap Tuesday, we have to make the sculpture from that piece of soap and we can't add to it if we make a mistake. There are even going to be judges and prizes given. This is starting to feel like Project Runway. "Don't bore the judges" and "Make it work" as Tim Gunn would say.

I decided that I am going to make a bird out of soap. We have to make some sort of base for our sculpture to sit on, so I made a bird's nest. I didn't want to buy one, so I made one out of a pair of my husband's old leather moccasin slippers, some grapevines & twigs and some soft downy material I bought at a craft store a while back. The nest looks like the real thing too.

I am also going to have to step it up a bit for my ceramics class. I have about five more ceramic projects to complete before the end of the semester, which I think is December 15th. I went in last week during one of my days off and did some extra work. So folks, the pressure is on. I don't think I could fit in time for a part-time job now, even if i did get one!

Simply Cats 3-D Art Project

I have been very busy this weekend finishing my next project for 3-D art class. It is due next Tuesday, so I spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday working on it. I just have a few things to do Monday and it is done. My project is a minature version of a cat shelter that I did volunteer work for this summer, Simply Cats. It was made from a book folding pattern that I turned into three separate rooms that housed the cats. Simply Cats has a total of about 11 rooms, but I didn't have time to create all of them, so I just highlighted three. Simply Cats groups certain types of cats together in the same room. The fat, overweight cats are in one room, the kittens are in a room all together, and the cats with allergies are put together in another room. These are the three cat rooms that I represented in my 3-D project. I happen to love minatures and this was a perfect opportunity to indulge in one of my interests. My mother had the same love of minatures. She use to make doll houses and put minature fixtures inside the houses. I guess that is where I got attraction for all things minature came from. I have a small collection of minatures from my vintage Barbie collection and some other nic-nacs, so I used a few of these items for this project. I really didn't have to buy hardly supplies for this piece. I had most of them at home.

Since this is 3-D, I can't really put it into the scanner right now so it can be seen. But I will take a picture of it and post it later. It turned out really fantastic and it was so much fun to do. I'm pretty sure I will get an 'A' on this project. It's kind of like those shows on T.V., Project Runway or Design Star, where you think you have created the perfect project or design, but it all depends on what the judges think--or in this case, what the teacher thinks.

Colored Pencil Art Workshop Teaching Job!

This weekend I taught an art workshop at the Vineyard Vine Arts Studio. The workshop was on colored pencil and turpenoid. I had a total of four students, which isn't bad for this economy. I had so much fun and the students did too. There is another workshop next Saturday that all four students will be coming too. It is wonderful to have this opportunity because so many art schools and art programs have been closing their doors due to the economy and that really sucks when teaching art is what you want to do for a living. What is really a blessing is that I am actually getting paid to teach these workshops! How cool is that!

I finally have some breathing room to get back to some of my personal art projects, like the commissioned portrait I received in September. Fortunately there is no deadline on this commission, so there is really no pressure. I just want it to be done before the Christmas season starts to kick in. I am also motivated to finish it so I can get paid.

Ephemeral Art at Payette Lake

When I was in McCall by the beautiful Payette Lake, I happen to be on a beach with a lot of things like pine needles, pine cones, bird feathers, etc., so I used these items to make a little sculpture arrangement right there on the beach next to some rocks. I have posted a photo of the sculpture I made and another one of me enjoying my time on the beach of the Payette Lake.

There is an artist by the name of Andy Goldsworthy who does this same type of nature sculpture. He uses objects found in nature and puts them together to make an amazing design and leaves them out there in the open. He calls it ephemeral art because it is art that is meant to be temporary. It is art that is made from nature and will eventually be destroyed by nature and the elements. I learned about his art in my 3D art class at school and I think I would like to follow this tradition whenever and wherever I go on vacation.