Monday, November 29, 2010

Conceptual Art


One of the classes that freshmen are required(one of many) to take at SAIC is a research class called, well, Research. We 'research' various topics and work our imagination and idea muscle and create highly conceptual pieces. One of the first projects we worked on dealt with 'collections'. We practiced collecting objects loosely tied to a theme of our choice: personal items, items under our bed, etc. We would then critique the collections, where the class would try and guess what the theme or idea of the collection was.

Ultimately we made a collection piece, where we had to collect objects that had consistency with each object. I collected stuff animals from a friend, and thrift stores. I took out the stuffing and re-stuffed them with the following: fries, flour (symbolized crack), cigerettes, and conditioner (symbolized sperm). My concept was, we stuff children(represented by the stuffed animals) with, for lack of a more thoughtful word, 'bad' things.

For instance, I chose fries because 50% of kids in America are over weight.


Flour, because drug dealers often smuggle drugs across the border by stuffing child's stuffed animal. There's also an urban legend that a couple hallowed their dead baby and filled the corpse with drugs...not sure if its real, but it exposes that drug smugglers will even exploit children.

Cigarettes, in 3rd world countries most families don't really tend to their children, so a lot of kids pick up smoking and become terribly addicted.

Conditioner(sperm), children make up a percentage of human trafficking and since they are too young to be impregnated men do not wear condoms.
Feed back included:
+making the stuffed animals the same(same stuffed animal) to make the piece more balanced
+getting a hold of real crack and sperm, would make the piece more powerful

Overall my class and teacher enjoyed it