Anxious Birthday Cake

So, this was my second project for my Sculpting Class this Semester. We had to pick a feeling word and an object word out of a hat this time to do an Abstraction of the object that was picked. I got Anxious Birthday Cake; my therapist likes this one the best. Most everyone that I have shown this to really likes it. I had a sheet of steel to work with, so with this project, I learned how to use a plasma cutter, metal power tools, die caster, and a welder. I have a second steel project that was a Kinetic Project which means it had to mechanically move. By the end of that project, I have become a pretty good welder. I would have never thought that I would be doing these things in my life, but boy has Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8-11am been a lot of fun and a lot of learning. Note: The Birthday Cake looked more like a space rocket, so I added acrylic paint mixed with molding paste to give the appearance of frosting dripping off the cake.

End of Semester Graduate School for Art Therapy - Impatient Sculpture

Well it is official, I have everything in for my first semester at Graduate School for Art Therapy. On top of taking three graduate level courses this semester, I needed 6 credit hours of studio art in 3 D work. I still have two weeks left in my Sculpting Class at Pima Community College with Joe Del Par who is an amazing teacher - I highly recommend any of his classes. I also participated in over 60 hours of clay wheel work and hand building at the Tucson Clay Co-Op, also a great place to learn. My roommate joined me at the Clay Co-op and has just taken to clay like a natural. I think she will continue there as I go back to focus more on painting and watercolor. I have truly missed those mediums this semester. I have done some Acrylics at Art Awakenings here in Tucson which I will post here in the next couple of days. However, I wanted to share my adventures into 3D art. My first assignment in my sculpting class was a Non-Objective Piece (So it could not look like anything in everyday reality). I had a sheet of wood to work with and Pima West has a ton of tools (I am the POWER TOOL Queen now). So for this first piece, each student had to take a feeling word from a hat and create that feeling with the wood. We could paint our pieces with only one color. My Word was Impatient. I tried to give the idea of going in many directions, somewhat chaotically, and I painted it orange because impatiences has some feeling of frustration and anger which I connect with red but it is more mellow - those the orange. I have included a view from the top and from the side.

Lady Sculpture, Friday, April 17, 2009

This is a sketch of a sculpture that my house mate Julie made and gave me several years back. I like the lady a lot and look at it frequently. Julie said that the sculpture reminded her of me and my recovery in life. As I walk down this path of life and walk with other people and new people down this path of life, I think of this picture often as I see new people begin the long journey of healing and life and opening up and exposure. And then as I find myself on the edge of a new cliff with God, I find myself back in this point again at times before I take that leap and burst off the edge.