Main Idea

After doing some mind-mapping, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to create the abstract tornado, because I felt like that one had the most meaning to me.

 Here are some preliminary drawings and ideas I came up with...

3 ideas

The boxes I designed are as follows
The first was a way to store all of my track medals. I came up with three sections, which resembled the three places that receive medals and the stage the winners stand on. The medals would be stored in a paton like container which would have sliding door and they would be stacked inside.

The second idea was to create an abstract tornado in order to represent an incident my grandmother had the day before the Joplin tornado. There was a lid designed and the outside was cut into parts and rounded to create an curved pattern.

The last one is a holder for my snow globe from Pennsylvania with the Liberty Bell. The outside mimicked the outside shape that contains the actual bell and a bucket like object would hold the globe from a chain. 

3 objects

We had to come up with three objects and three different ideas of how to display those objects by making a vessel using primarily a band saw.

The three objects I chose were a snow globe from Pennsylvania, my medals from track, and my angel from my grandma.

Summary of Project

          In this project I have learned the importance of taking more pictures than you need. Being over-prepared was very helpful in this situation. This project has really challenged me to think outside of the box. It would be easy to just assemble the collage the way that the actual location looked, but to skew different aspects of the image and looking at detail was the challenging part.

          Some troubles I faced were being able to capture my location with trains in it because it was very rare that a train would stop on the tracks. I was lucky enough to drive by when one had stopped, which greatly benefitted my ability to complete this project. My original idea was to use the back to back continuous long line of train cars into my collage by tiling my images in one long row. However, after coming up with the idea of using the X shaped box, I decided to revolve my project around the sign itself. I put all my images with the rail road crossing sign in the center of the X to indicate the crossing and the middle of my image.

           Extending out from the middle of the X is both views of the train looking East and West of the sign. On top I included the location at sunset to show a varying time range and on the bottom I showed closer details of the railroad, the rocks, and other

details from the bottom of my image.

          Overall, I really enjoyed this project and being able to be creative with my

photographs. I thought the whole concept of creating time and space through the use of two-dimensional images was really an intriguing idea and I would probably continue projects like this on my own free time.

Final Collage

Work in process

I had so many images printed out that it covered my entire floor with pictures. After thinking about my options I chose to create my collage on a cardboard X to emulate the idea of a railroad crossing sign. I felt like this would bring an entirely new element of creating space.

Ways of Seeing

This whole video focused on the idea that a piece of artworks location can greatly affect how it is viewed. Its original location is obviously the most legitimate place and solidities its meaning. However, since the invention of the camera, replications are abundantly common. A reproduction of an image can allow for millions of views anywhere, in different contexts. By placing it in a different location, it loses some of its meaning. If you show an image in the

Classroom, it may seem the same but you can not see the texture of the painting, the proper lighting, or as Berger states, “the silence and stillness of a painting”.

          Now with replications it is mysterious the cause of the market value. The image is so readily available to us, you would think that the original would go down in value. However, the opposite is true. Because we are so use to seeing images on screens and so forth, viewing an original gives a sense of awe because of the closeness to something that a famous artist created.

          Different contexts of a painting doesn't just have to be its location. If you put an image with two very different songs, you will have completely different emotions involved. The use of images in videos also alters the meaning of the work. Just like those images are skewed in meaning, we can also intentionally skew our images in our collages to achieve the emotions we want for our project.