Great Pretender~DC from dede on Vimeo.
DeDe Curtis
For our Art class, The Great Pretender we have been working on creating kinetic sculptures. There is a lot of work that went into my project that I will share with you. I have the seed of my project my idea and design blue print. There’s my video that shows the action of my sculpture and some pictures of it. As well as my artist statement that explains the entire process. I enjoyed working on my project the last couple of weeks and hope you enjoy reading about it and watching it! 🙂
October, 2012
The Lion’s Eye
Aluminium pan, cylinder cup, can, cylinder container, water, tape, hot glue paint
12” by 26”
This piece incorporates the idea of the motion of my power animal and my natural energy design. I started out with the idea of my power animal, the lioness. First i did a lot of research on different animals using videos, I ching, and other resources to channel my power animal. Then I zoomed into to some specific movements of my animal that embodied characteristics we had in common. The motions I choose was the head held high to show confidence, the legs and stride that showed powerfulness and the eyes that showed focus. Within this process I did a few things to help me understand the motion of the lioness including drawing a sketch of it then creating a flip book of my animal using this movement. After carefully ideas and comparing I choose to use the eyes as the motion I would copy. So then I had to find ways this focus and motion was used with humans and machines. I found that car mirrors, and basketball teams defense copied this motion with different speeds. Then I created a kinetic wire sculpture displaying the similarities and differences in the way my animal, machine and human example show this movement.
Now it was time to add in my natural element. For lions earth is their natural element. So my next task was to find out how my natural element is used as a natural energy. While researching I found out about geothermal energy, which is using steam and heat that comes to the earth’s surface from below the earths crust. Then I had to sketch the process and then make my own blueprint of a simpler version of the same design.
This is when things started to come together. My design is a combination of my blueprint and the kinetic wire sculpture I made before. In my design the idea is that you pour water down one tube, it goes into the aluminum pan where theres heated water, it comes up through the other tube and goes through a tunnel that connects to a large cylinder cup. Â The first tube represents the water we push down into the earth crust, the aluminum pan represents the heat below earth crust, the second tube is the pipeline that get the heated water, the tunnel represents the heat transfer and the cylinder cup represents the geothermal power plant that turns the heat into energy.
With my design the motion of the water represents the motion of my power animal and the motions i created in my kinetic sculpture. It goes through multiple directions all adding to the main focus. The path starts direct then goes in many directions while in the pan and then comes back up and going through the tunnel it is once again directly focused in one direction. The tubes and tunnel are colored blue to represent water and the pan black to represent earth. Also there is an eye on the pan and the cylinder cup at the end the represents focus.
During this process I feel like I personally in a metaphorical way went through the motions of my animal. I started off with an exact blueprint and direction for my project with a materials list. Then once I started I ended up working on one aspect of the design that added to the main focus of it. As time went on separate pieces I had been working on for example the tubes and tunnel started to add to the main design and things came together. Of course there were mishaps and things that had to be re thought. For example I started  having three tubes but as things came together the third seemed excessive and it took away from the purpose of the piece. Also I originally used tape to hold things together and found that hot glue worked better and looked more appealing. All in all I love my piece. I’m proud of it and all the work that went into it. I’m most proud of how everything tied together. I feel like my purpose and focus comes across in the piece and it effectively represents the purpose of the course and what I take from it.