A Single Cup of Water

Short comic thing

3) After:  After getting home and having to maintain my work ethic without any structure and far less instruction; being stuck inside with my family has been,,, an experience for sure and one I was hoping to avoid ever doing again after moving out for U of M in the fall.  

Whew it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything!  Unfortunately I ended up contracting COVID-19 and have been bed bound for the past week, so I’m trying to wrap up my work for this class so I can go back to sleeping and drinking tea :P

I finished painting my second can!  This is supposed to be representative of “the in between” of being immersed in actual classes and having to readjust and move out as quickly as possible. 

I was also able to start painting my “middle” can today and record it in my new new new setup.  I’m not completely sure what else I’d like to put on there but I was trying to maintain some of the colors and objects from my first painting (red centerpiece, as well as the light blue human figure) to create a connection between each individual can.

New new new setup for recording work.  In order for me to spin the can so you all could see what I’ve painted, I needed some mechanism to do it so my hands wouldn’t distract from the work.  I tried magnets, I tried strings, I tried tape on popsicle sticks and everything just ended up looking really weird.  Finally I was able to set up a small barstool that I loosened so that I could easily spin the top which my can is sitting on.  Hopefully this makes it easier to see everything :)

NEW new setup for photographing my remapping project - spray painted my “middle” and “end” cans today :)

Here’s some shots of and during my set-up (cameo of my dog Cookie Monster).

I started painting today!

Here’s my video showing how my body extension is used in social interactions, all the music and filming was done by me, but that’s my sister in there :). Hope it’s not too cheesy. It definitely is.  Let me know what you guys think!

When reflecting on the semester, not just now for this assignment, but in general throughout the entire year, what I often came back to, especially now in the midst of this global pandemic, was the idea of looking at the struggles and setbacks as mere moments in the scheme of the rest of my life.  This sentiment has gotten through a lot of tough situations that I’ve had to deal with in both school-related and personal issues, and I think is a good basis for a theme in this project. When trying to think of what might help represent this idea of the temporary but still tell a clear story about those challenges that started the thought process to begin with, I thought about different mediums that might aid in this.  What I came up with was a simple aluminum Arizona Iced Tea can, completely replaceable, not even one dollar to purchase, temporary.  What I propose for this re-mapping of my semester, I want to paint a “scroll” of abstracted emotions (anger, nervous, spontaneous) as well as clear figures (art supplies, busses, sickness) that reflect the things I have experienced in this time.  Not only does the piece itself create a connection with what is considered temporary versus what we choose to remember, but the nature of its shape will force the audience to look at each object individually one at a time before “scrolling” to other sides of the can.

This is a storyboard for what I plan to do with my body extension video.  Essentially, I want to exhibit the different levels of security I have in interactions with others, by changing whether my “curtains” are drawn up or down depending on the setting I’m in. In this way I hope to still manage to keep my original idea about social interactions and insecurities. 

More updates soon!

Third attempt: the weights helped the curtains fall down all the way once I let go of the strings holding them up.  A success!