Lend Me Your Ear: Text as Art

Again using my body part sculpture, I had to create a piece using only text. I am most comfortable in photoshop, so I decided to work in there instead of drawing by hand. The theme to this piece is idioms. Continuing on the concept of how we hear and listen, I wanted to expand that idea to how we interpret cultural oddities, like idioms. There is so much more to it than just listening, but understanding as well. I purposely made the background text small, because upon first glance it's not important content, just as color and shape. I hoped, however, that if someone was truly interested that they could get closer and read the background. There it defines various parts of the English language, such as idioms. I was able to combine my love of English and art in this piece. I love how this turned out!

Are You Listening? Digital Collage Project

For this assignment we had to incorporate images of our body part sculpture into a digital collage. Since the cochlea is a part of the ear, I thought listening was a fitting theme for my collage. My sculpture has an impersonal, science fair sort of feel, so I wanted to pair that with a human element it had been lacking. I used personal photos of friends and family, all in black and white. I wanted to contrast the foreground and the background, and I found this to be the most effective way of doing it. This piece turned out to be very personal for me, and I'm pleased with the results.

Corrugated Cochlea: The Finished Sculpture

So here is the finished product! Countless hours went into the construction and coloring of this sculpture but I really like the result! I definitely found some creative ways to work with cardboard to create a desired effect. The internal tube was especially difficult, but it's definitely my favorite part! I also really like how the colors turned out. I was afraid that I would run out of oil pastels, so I picked different colors for each section. The internal part is warm colors, yellow, orange, and red, and the outside is their cool, complimentary counterparts! I was a little burned out on this piece towards the end, but I'm glad I put in those last few hours to pay attention to the details and make it all that much better!

Cochlea Sculpture: Paper Model

The second step in creating my cochlea sculpture was to make a miniature model out of paper and tape. This was especially helpful to see how my sculpture will stand, and the best way to create it. It was fun, and made me think more about my medium and how things would be held together. I think of cardboard as the stubborn older brother to paper, so this model was a lot easier to shape and bend than cardboard would be. It got me thinking about how the finished product would all work together!

Cochlea Sculpture: Initial Drawings

We were assigned to complete a cardboard model of an internal body part which took several stages before actually being made in cardboard. These were the initial drawings I made while planning my model; you'll see in later posts that my plans for actually executing the sculpture changed from these designs. Sometimes you just have to roll with it. I apologize if these are difficult to see, they are sketches made lightly in pencil. Click on the images to see a larger version. =)

My body part is the cochlea. Here is a description of a cochlea from Wikipedia:

The cochlea is the auditory portion of the inner ear. Its core component is the Organ of Corti, the sensory organ of hearing, which is distributed along the partition separating fluid chambers in the coiled tapered tube of the cochlea. The name is from the Latin for snail, in reference to its coiled shape.