Torrey Weisberg-Casting Project

These rail road nails are made out of plaster and wax. They wouldn't be able to work as rail road spikes because they would break. The plaster is too brittle and the wax would just bend. The bronze paint mimics the original brown metal, but it has a fake sense of value, there is no reason for actual rail road spikes to be made out of bronze. Fake bronze paint on fake rail road spikes.

LTLYM- Amy Waldorf- Top 15 items on your bucket list

I was very excited to read through everyone's lists. Some people listed things that were unique and highly unlikely (such as "take over the world" "get my letter to Hogwarts" and "become king of France, Italy, Germany, England... etc.") while some things were more common and more reasonable (such as "get married, have kids" "graduate college" "skydive" and "travel to ___"). I was intrigued by the discussion that was taking place while everyone was writing down their lists. Some people seemed to believe that bucket lists are a bunch of baloney, others take them to have a ton of serious meaning, while others (such as myself) believe they're just a fun little thing to write down "if I could I would."

Pedestal Project- Amy Waldorf

When making this pedestal, my idea was to reference jewelry, and specifically, jewelry making (a favorite hobby of mine). I attached wire, strings of beads, earring hook and even pliers as a way to speak about each intricate detail of jewelry making. I chose to paint the wooden frames brightly as a way to reference brightly colored beads, which I like to work with. I attached gems to each of the wooden frames as another way to reference the beads I enjoy using. 

Tuttle- Amy Waldorf

Rossow_Rubber Latex Molds - Manufactured Object

 

An iron is mass produced and used flatten material using heat. I have created one single plaster iron that is one of a kind and is unusable as the iron is to be used. I have also created a multilayer - multicolored iron using wax. A material that turns to liquid when heated there for changing the entire meaning of the iron. I sliced the wax iron in two and exposed the hidden layers of color inside to create an interesting visual representation of an iron cast in wax.

Rossow_Unmonumental Pedestal/Sculpture

Pedestals once functioned as a prop needed to keep an art sculpture from falling. Macrame's original function was to keep the threads from unraveling on a tapestry or weaving. Pedestals evolved from functional to enhancing the art and at times are the art itself. Macrame also evolved from functional to enhancing the art to being the art itself. I incorporated wire and macrame into a sculptured knotted pedestal able to stand on it's own and hold an object while keeping the structure thin delicate and wiry.
Wire low profile and bendable yet unable to stand and not strong enough to set anything on top of seemed like a unique challenge for me. Referencing the size and shape of a pedestal, yet not acting like a pedestal. Not having a top to place something on or being strong enough to support anything like a pedestal would be.

Blessings Banda-Pedestal Project

Blessings Banda

"Stringth"

For my final project I decided to work with string, wood and wire. My initial idea was to make a sculpture that looks like it could hold things despite the material its made of. I also thought as the pedestal as the art. The Intricate crossing and weaving of the string on the inside of the piece is what makes this piece interesting.

I really enjoyed this project and would like to work with string in the future. 

Pedestal Project ~ Milli Fitzgerald

My project was the glass 'card house' made with plexiglass. I chose to structure my pedestal like this because I was attracted to the idea of a pedestal being or even looking fragile. I believe that this project was a success in doing so because not only did it make itself appear fragile, but almost invisible when it wanted to be. On the other hand the pedestal also looked to be flashy in certain light. I believe if this was an actual functional pedestal it would be successful because the artist displaying their piece can chose to make it invisible or flashy.

Pedestal Project- Kasie Fischer

Human Menagerie

Kasie Fischer

I built this as a "pedestal" to show the way that animals are displayed. It is an interactive artwork that shows how it is to be in a small enclosed area with people staring at you. It is uncomfortable, but under the right circumstances can be a little bit comforting as well. I wanted to show the vulnerability of the enclosure and the ridiculousness of the "habitat" that is given in these circumstances.

Amanda Wiser- Pedestal Project

For the Pedestal Project, I built a stage. The nature of the stage is that whatever is on top of it becomes the center of attention and focus, much like a pedestal. However, with a stage, and an inviting step, viewers can walk on the stage, and thus become the "artwork" themselves. While the stage is an old concept, and fairly common, it is not something typically associated with visual arts, but rather theater. The footprints on the stage left by passing viewers came as a happy accident to me, and allowed the stage to display evidence of those who had been there. 

Sarah Wehr - Pedestal Project

I chose to work with paper, because I wanted to reference my drawings. The pedestal then becomes the art.

Torrey Weisberg pedestal project

This is a solid wood block that appears to be hanging in a web of thread. the visual contrast between the impossibility of the heavy wood supported by the thin light thread is the main goal of this piece.

Pedestal-Ryan Kedrowski-Souba

Original Plan...

Hot Knife (when it was still working)

Me, Being confident that I could finish this in time...

Cruising Along...

Shortly before the first incident...

Chemical exposure from melted foam/burning glue...

Then the hot knife broke...

Exhausted & desperate I scrape this together...

And All That Could Have Been...

Ryan Kedrowski-Souba

2014

"I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear --

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley 

I accidentally explored failure with this piece.  I have a hard time admitting defeat, I always have.  There is more than one way to talk about this piece... there's it's current state-2/3 of a small Hamburglar's body that I am still working on.  There's the pile of scrap I brought in with a doctor's note resting on it and there's a hypothetical pedestal that I foolishly didn't think of until it was too late.

I will start by discussing the piece it will become at some point this summer.

I had set out to create a companion piece to my casted Happy Meal I created earlier this semester.  It was to become a life-sized statue of The Hamburglar resting a McDonald's tray containing my casted Happy Meal on his back.  The sculpture was to be all white, much like the happy meal items and I was shaping it to reference the statue of Atlas.  Since some people may not know of this mythological tale I'll tell a very very brief version:  long ago the Titans fought the Olympians and lost.  Atlas, who had sided with the Titans was punished by being forced to hold a celestial sphere on his shoulders for eternity.  Seeing as how I'm obsessed with esoterica, I not only know a great deal about Atlas's plight, but also the mythology of McDonaldland of which The Hamburglar is the main antagonist.  The fact that the McDonald's corporation integrated an entire imaginary world to better sell Happy Meals to children is one of the most amazingly American things to have ever happened.  I will finish this sculpture and title it "The Weight of the World" which is a double entendre.

The second iteration of this piece is the large pile of cans and boxes holding a doctor's note.  I am not pleased with this as an object.  I regret not coming up with a backup plan earlier as it was becoming increasingly obvious that I had severely underestimated the time table.  I was using a heat knife to slice up the styrofoam and it was moving along quite well until I succumbed to a dizzy spell/fainting spell from the fumes produced in the process.  Luckily, the heat knife only stays heated if you hold the button in and when I was unconscious I hadn't held the button in... otherwise this could have been even more dangerous than it already seemed to be, especially at 4am.  Luckily my girlfriend got me in to see a doctor as soon as possible and aside from burning eyes, lungs and throat and a terrible headache I came out of it alright.  When I recovered, I was determined to finish only to find that the heat knife stopped working after a few minutes.  It was getting quite late again and I had to come up with something.  I decided to make a shrine to my failure to deliver on what I arrogantly promised myself I would finish.  The shrine I made was a reflection on my flimsiness and insecurity in the wake of a tremendously crushing semester.  My lifestyle was spinning out of control and my attempt to push out in front of it was ill-conceived and doomed for failure.  Several people warned me that I shouldn't have set the bar so high for myself when I'm already under too much pressure and that I barely have any time to work on something so ambitious... and I think deep-down I knew it too but couldn't admit it.  So I ended up with something scraped together in a very haphazard way that I regret.  I did think that the doctor's note was funny, but I guess it was an inside joke to some degree and my mental state at the time made it seem funnier to me than it perhaps was to anyone else.  In a lot of ways this was an unintentional performance about failure and it's only made worse by comparison when I consider the third version...

The third way to look at this is far more intelligent and so simple I couldn't have thought of it in my panicked state.  Basically, I should have brought in the half formed structure of the pedestal that I have finished... then stab the doctor's note into the flat top-most surface of it using the broken hot knife.  I realized it shortly after I got to the school.  I mean, I knew that the haphazard object I brought in was challenging both aesthetically and semiotically... but I could have salvaged a failed sculpture that functioned much better had I kept my wits about me after the knife broke.  (It also would have been cathartic to cause some hard to this object that had caused me so much grief).  Maybe that's all I need to say... the conception was a reflection of my pride and determination... the shaky heap was a reflection of my bemused resignation and malaise and the afterthought that I regret not bringing in instead is a reflection of my anger towards myself for my lack of foresight.