In the Art class, we created power animal sculptures. The sculptures showed  how our power animal’s movements can be mimicked by human and machine activities.  I am proud that in this project I was able to see what animal represents me the best. In this project, I learned that animal movements can be compared to our lives and to machines.

 

Minnat Yahya
September, 2012
                                             Rabbit and our life movements (13”, 18”, 5.5”)
                                         (made with: wire, clay, sculpey, and cardboard)

We made a sculpture that represents how  the movements of the machine and the human mimics the  power animal movement. The steps we took to get to the final sculpture we have now were:
we explored the term power animal, we used the ICHING to learn about elements as a way of finding our power animals, we researched our power animal, then we went to the zoo to observe the movement, we found some characteristics for the animal that are similar to our characteristics. We also researched some machines and human activities that are similar to our power animal movements, and finally we built our animal movement, the machine, and the human activity.

The way I built my sculpture on the board was, I put the movement of my machine which it was the sewing machine first.  On top of that I put the human activity which was jump rope, and finally I built the moment of my power animal which is a rabbit hopping. I put the power animal movement last, because I felt that it was the main thing and everything below was just a copy of it.

The way I built up my piece and how I got there was by:
First  we sketched the power Animal to understand its general shape, second we made a flip book to help us understand the movement of the animal, third we sketched the movement in a linear path, fourth we got three pieces of wires that we can make the movements on similar to this, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^. Also we got pieces of clay and we started putting medium pieces of clay to each end of a wire. Then we attached the pieces of clay with the wires to a squared piece of board, and last we chose one of the elements that goes with out power animal and decorated
the board similar to the specific element that goes with our specific animal. For example, I have
a rabbit and rabbits are mostly on the ground, so that is earth, so I decorated my board with
brown and green.

That was such a new thing for all of us and everyone loved that new experience.