Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘My Sculptures UTPA MFA’ Category

Music and Art

Posted in Art Theory, Music and Art, My Paintings UTPA MFA, My Sculptures UTPA MFA, tagged , , , on March 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

A last burst of creativity before the semester ends:  Chad Farris gives us a list of bands and tells us to “pick a band and do a piece using each song on the CD”. My pick is GRAILS …”Grails is the premier instrumental rock act of the Northeast Portland area. An emerging new artist, ready to take the word by storm.” And they do! Just check the title of the CD I bought: “The Burden of Hope”. Then the titles of the songs they collectively wrote: Canyon Hymn, White Flag, Broken Ballad, Space Prophet Dogan, Invocation, In The Beginning, The Deed, and Lord I Hate Your Day. Yes, they are inventive with their words … words used carefully with lots of connotations.

My sculpture/painting used each song as one of the torn, painted pieces of watercolor paper covering a wooden base and crowned with a glistening seashell … three cheers for music and mystery!

Read Full Post »

Aesthetic Categories Tea Service

Posted in Art Theory, My Sculptures UTPA MFA, UTPA MFA, tagged , , , , on March 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »

After perusing the Fall 2011 issue of Cabinet magazine (a magazine of Art and Culture) I was tempted to visualize the categories Professor S. Ngai discussed in her article. The words used to discuss art was her topic. They include Cute, Disgusting. Zany, Merely Interesting, Interesting and Sublime … sorry, no discussion of Beautiful. I could not resist the temptation to pick out some bowls, which were to be discarded in the ceramics lab, and paint them and arrange them as a Tea Service … in a portable tray … to deposit on a table with a pot of hot tea. Prof. Hyslin had instructed us to use the Majolica glaze and produce some objects.

"Aesthetic Categories Tea Service"

"Aesthetic Categories Tea Service" with Cabinet Magazine

Here it is!!  Tea in aesthetic bowls!! The kewpie doll in the magazine also illustrates the “cute” category.

"Aesthetic Categories Tea Service" close up

"Aesthetic Categories Tea Service" close up

Read Full Post »

Here is one corner of my studio with my version of the world of Palms …

Posted in My Sculptures UTPA MFA, Sculpture, UTPA MFA, tagged , , , , on March 1, 2012| 1 Comment »

Palms in the wind! Palms with icicles!

Here is the corner of my studio dedicated to the idea of palms … great colors and very sharp spines up and down the stem.

Gingerly is the way to handle the fronds. In the wind they spiral down to clonk you on the head … when they are covered with ice they fall from 30 feet up and impale flowers, dogs, and people. Wear a hat!

In the last four years that I have been in the Rio Grande Valley two years had a couple days of icy weather. We cover all the flowers and shrubs with plastic and cross our fingers. As dawn rises the palms are coated in ice and shine and sparkle. As the sun comes up the ice coating begins to slide off the palms as they are 40 feet in the air and then watch out!! A sliver of ice could be six inches long and sharp as a knife … it simulates the edges of the palm frond. How exhilarating to watch them descend as you hop around to avoid a hit!

Read Full Post »

Windmill

Posted in My Sculptures UTPA MFA, Sculpture, Texas, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2011| 1 Comment »

In the last few days an assignment from Dr. Pace to go to the South Texas Museum of History in Edinburg and select an object to base a 3D sculpture on.  In front of the Museum is an old windmill of the type used so long in Texas.  So I drew it … I photographed it … I tried to see how it was constructed to resist the strong winds in the Texas landscape.  It was sturdy.

Mary P Williams "Windmill"

Mary P Williams "Windmill"

Here it is!  Made with dried palm fronds and the acorns from an oak tree … it was a struggle but worth the effort.

"Windmill" closeup

"Windmill" closeup

Read Full Post »

Flea Market Sculpture

Posted in My Sculptures UTPA MFA, Sculpture, UTPA MFA, tagged , , on November 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Dr. Lorenzo Pace tells us to all “go to 2 or 3 flea markets, buy a few items, and make a sculpture out of them.”

Mary P Williams "Fragility vs. Hardness

Mary P Williams "Fragility vs. Hardness

So here is my piece, five feet tall, using three metal objects, and a blown egg, and tissue paper.  The title is “Fragility vs Hardness”.

Mary P Williams "Fragility vs. Hardness" egg detail

Mary P Williams "Fragility vs. Hardness" egg detail

Hopefully the egg, sandwiched between two metal plates,

Mary P Williams "Fragility vs. Hardness" bottom detail

Mary P Williams "Fragility vs. Hardness" bottom detail

and the tissue paper lying under another heavy metal plate, will convey the concept.  Fragile, ephemeral, momentary,transitory, gauzy, or temporary as opposed to hardness, solidness, lasting, enduring, or heaviness.  It had to be a freestanding sculpture (i.e. a person must be able to walk around it). Does it succeed?

Read Full Post »

3-D Class

Posted in My Sculptures UTPA MFA, Sculpture, UTPA MFA, tagged , , , , , on October 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Here is the assignment in 3-D class: Make a free-standing sculpture, as tall as you are, and out of indigenous materials. In this case indigenous includes anything found around the studios.

Mary P Williams "3-D Palms"

Mary P Williams "3-D Palms"

For my person I did a representation of my painting with colorful “painters hands” using a mop, styrofoam, and paint.

Jill Carpenter "3-D Quinceanera"

Jill Carpenter "3-D Quinceanera"

Jill did a Quinceanera, or “Sweet Sixteen” figure, with all the Mexican symbols, as it is done here in the Rio Grande Valley.

Manuel Lince "3-D Torso"

Manuel Lince "3-D Torso"

Manuel surprised us all with a cast of a friend done in ground up corn husks which he mixed with glue, layered on her body, and sand-papered to finish it.(Sand-papered the white cast – not her body!)

Erika "3-D Robot"

Erika "3-D Robot"

Finally, Erika came up with an endearing Robot … out of items discarded by her teenage son … it was made of shoe boxes, cereal boxes, and old toy boxes. Very fanciful !

Read Full Post »