The purpose of this action project was for each of us to discover our power animal and the movement it takes on in mechanical machines, humans and naturally. During the research of this project I learned that my power animal is an eagle and that the eagle is a sacred bird in some North American cultures, and its feathers are central to many religious and spiritual customs among Native Americans. This is important because everyone needs to find their power animal! I’m also very proud of the artwork I competed since I’m not exactly the greatest artist.
Henry Drane, Completed September 2012 called “The eagle.” The materials used were wire, cardboard and clay.
My piece is about my power animal and how its moves can be seen in human, mechanical and natural movement. To get to my final product we first started by exploring the term power animal and understanding what it means to us. Soon after we used ICHING to learn about elements as a way of finding our power animal, which lead to the research of our own individual power animal. After discovering our own power animal we had to observe its movement and relate it to a certain movement a human and mechanical machine emulate. Once we had our 3 movements sketched we re-created them by using our wires as a way of visualizing the movements. Finally we pieced them all together on the same platform, added some clay decorations for more visual effect and created our own beads to slide across our wire to show it’s proper movement.
Each part of the piece has its own job in recreating the movement I was trying to follow. The clay decoration is to show the element that relates to our power animal and it’s movement. The wire is what shows the certain movement I am trying to copy and the beads show you the path it takes across the movements.
Making our final finished piece started by me sketching the general shape of my power animal and then trying to bring that power animals movement onto paper. I did this by creating a flipbook that mimicked the movement of my power animal. After I sketched the movement in a linear path I brought that linear path to life. I did this by using my wire and shaping it into the exact linear path in my sketch and I did so 3 times for each movement, mechanical, human and the natural movement. Once I had my wires completed I moved onto to recreating the natural elements that would be involved with my power animal with clay. I covered the base of my platform with the shapes and colors that the animal itself would be around. Finally I created the beads and shaped them to be able to follow along the wires linear path. After testing the beads and seeing that they freely moved along the wire I was complete.