Artist Inspiration:
For my artist inspiration, I was inspired by the work of Matisse. I was specifically drawn to his cut out works like The Sheaf and Black Leaf on Green Background. The cut outs that I selected from Matisse show plant life, for the first is of a leaf and the second is, I'm assuming, sea life, for the cut outs look like seaweed, coral, and little jellyfish can be seen. I liked the pastel colors that were used in The Parakeet and the Mermaid, for I thought they pop out at the viewer. My piece however, uses a bright, bold red instead of the calm pastels. For my piece, I wanted to use the same style as Matisse, however I wanted to add my own spin on it by using string instead of paper.
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Cultural Inspiration:
For my cultural inspiration, I was inspired by Hawaii’s plant life. Hawaii has multiple types of plants on land and in sea, and so I wanted to use those in my piece, especially since they're similar to the ones Matisse used in his work. Hawaii's land consists of around 3,000 native species of plants and animals. This amount makes Hawaii unique, and it's a great place of bio-diversity. For my piece, I wanted to do a Heliconia plant (on left). I liked the bright red hue it gave off, so I used bright red string and the room's light to give it a small shine.
Citations:
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Red Ginger; Hana, Maui, Hawaii, Cathy Cordoni.
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Yellow Hibiscus; Hawaii, admin.
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Experimentation:
For my experimentation, I sketched my hand, and attempted to outline it in string. I sketched out the hand on a brown piece of sketch paper, and I added some details to it. Once I finished my sketch, I outlined the hand and fingers in brown string. Once I finished that, I filled in the nails of the hand with black string, making multiple layers to darken the color since one layer still showed through the paper.
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Process:
1.) First, I outlined the flowers and plants that I wanted to show.
2.) Next, after outlining the plants, I began to sew or I guess string the string into the paper in the outlined shape. 3.) I had difficulty with this process, so a quarter of the way through my piece, I decided to take the needle and just punch in holes around the outined shapes, this made it easier to tell where I need to punch the needle and string next. 4.) I started on the Hibiscus flower first, using blue, yellow and pink string. 5.) I stopped working on that flower and when to another flower, using pink and yellow string for the colors. 6.) Again I a stopped working, and moved to the Heliconia plant. I used red and yellow string for the colors. I worked on that plant most of the time and ended up finishing that plant first. 7.) Due to bad time management, I was only able to finish the Heliconia plant, and only half of the other plants. 8.) I decided to just use the Heliconia as my final piece. |
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Sketches:
For my sketches, I sketched out different plants or flowers that are grown in Hawaii. Some of these plants include a Hibiscus, Red Ginger, Helicana, Dahlia, and seaweed. I loved the shapes of the plant life and I thought it was so different than the plant life I see here in Wisconsin. I shaded in some of the plants justto get a sense of how it would look like, and some I left outlined.
Meaning Behind the Piece:
The meaning behind my piece is to show viewers the beauty of Hawaii's plant life through the Heliconia plant I used for my piece. My eyes were drawn to the plant when I first saw it, and thought it looked so unique and weird, but I also thought it was a beautiful plant. I wanted the viewer to see this as well through the bright red string I used for my piece.
Reflection:
I really liked the way my piece turned out, and was happy with the string work that I did. I wish I could've completed the entire piece, so in the future if I have time, I'll finish the piece and post it. I had some trouble with this piece though, like knowing where the nest hole punch should be placed. I kept making the hole bigger than it should be and the string would look weird with what I had wanted to show. The larger the pedal was, the harder it was to string, for I had to make multiple layers to get the bold color I had wanted to show.